


Something New Every Day

by imamaryanne



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bisexual Harry, Divorced Harry Potter & Ginny Weasley, M/M, Professor Harry, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 23:22:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 37,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16105928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imamaryanne/pseuds/imamaryanne
Summary: When his divorce from Ginny is finalized, Harry decides to take a position at the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts. His intention is to spend more time with his kids, but it's Neville Longbottom he winds up spending most of his time with.





	1. Chapter 1

“Neville, I swear you do not have to take sides,” Harry said patiently. He was unpacking his bags, getting his new living quarters at Hogwarts ready for the school year. 

He’d taken to wondering why, when the subject of his recently finalized divorce from Ginny came up, he was always the one having to reassure people that it wasn’t a sore subject, not the other way around. He was the one giving comfort, as though everyone else was far more bothered by the dissolution of his marriage than he was. It’d been mentioned in the society pages of the  _ Prophet  _ often enough that the entire wizarding world seemed to have an opinion. 

“It’s just that Ginny’s my friend,” Neville began.

But Harry cut him off, “So am I. And we can both still be you friends.” 

Neville looked relieved, if not entirely happy. “I just don’t get it, Harry. What happened?” 

Harry snorted. It wasn’t like anything really  _ happened. _ There’d been no cheating, no abuse. Just two people who came to the realization that they weren’t meant to be married. “We got married far too young,” Harry said. “Gin was up the duff with James and I thought the proper thing to do was marry her. Maybe that wasn’t the right choice to begin with.” 

“People get married when the girl gets pregnant all the time,” Neville pointed out. “Not all of them end in divorce.”

Harry pulled several sneak-o-scopes (different brands, different sizes. One could never have too many sneak-o-scopes) out of his trunk and lay them on his desk. He looked up at Neville, and decided on blunt honesty. “The truth is, Nev, that I wanted to be a Weasley more than anything. You know what it’s like, growing up without your parents and that longing for a real family.” Maybe Neville didn’t know it, even all these years later, he was still very close to his Gran, and had never married just to be a part of a family. “I think I loved the idea of being married to a Weasley more than I ever really loved Ginny. Which is stupid because Molly and Arthur would have considered me another son whether or not Ginny and I’d ever gotten married. By the time I realized that, she and I had already been married ten years and had three kids.” 

“But you guys never fought!” 

“We did though, especially when the kids were babies and toddlers. C’mon, you know us. Both of us having a fighting personality. But eventually we didn’t even care enough to fight and that’s when things got bad. We just...existed in different orbits. She was writing for the Prophet and traveling to Quidditch matches, I was doing the Auror thing and all three kids were spending far too much time at the Burrow. We only had sex maybe three times that last year.”

Neville still looked unhappy. “Neville,” Harry said, grabbing Neville’s shoulders and looking him square in the eyes, “I promise you. You do not have to choose sides in this divorce. Ginny and I are still co-parenting. We are still going to do Christmas and a summer holiday together. If you’re nervous, talk to her about it, but she’ll tell you the same thing. We’re on the same page, on the same team still.” 

Finally, Neville looked relieved. “Well, I’m sorry you’re divorced, but it’ll be nice having you here this year.” 

“It will, won’t it?” Harry asked, looking around his small efficiency flat. It wasn’t big, but it was enough for him in this new stage of his life. A fireplace was in one corner, across from Harry’s bed and wardrobe. A few small chairs were next to a bookcase, where Harry was setting up a few of his sneak-o-scopes. The others would be for his office. “Tell me about some of the students,” Harry said, trying to change the subject from his divorce. 

“Well, I don’t know how the kids will be for Defense Against the Dark Arts, but in Herbology…..” Neville was off and running, describing some of the students and what Harry could expect as a professor this coming year. 

Hogwarts still had a problem filling the DADA professor slot permanently. The Aurors office had taken over the position, each Auror taking a year or two contract to teach the class. Harry had always avoided it by being married with young kids. But when he and Ginny had decided to split last year, he realized that all three of his kids, James, Albus and Lily, would be at Hogwarts and he might as well try something new. He volunteered for the position and it was granted to him immediately. The Aurors were relieved; it was not a popular post and most aurors had to be forced into it.  

Harry listened to Neville as he continued to unpack. Neville got up to put the tea kettle on, and poured them each a cup. They talked about the upcoming school year, Harry’s lesson plans, how the previous Aurors had taught DADA, and what it was like having Minerva McGonagall as a boss. They didn’t bring up Harry’s divorce again, until Neville was leaving.

“You going to see your kids off on the Express next week?” Neville asked. 

“No,” Harry answered. “Ginny’ll be there, with Ron and Hermione and Rose and Hugo. I’ll be here waiting for them.” 

“I thought you were doing things together?” Neville asked, chiding. 

Harry smiled mildly, “I’ll get to see the kids every day here. Ginny won’t see them until Christmas. I’m giving her this one thing.” Again, he realized he had to reassure someone else about his marriage and child custody arrangements. He’d thought Molly would be the toughest one to convince that this divorce was friendly and for the best. But maybe he was wrong. Maybe it’d be Neville Longbottom, of all people. 

~~~~******~~~~~

A few days later, Harry was sitting at his desk in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. He was busy finishing up his lesson plans for the year. It’d been a lot more work than he thought it would be, because he had to look over the lessons that the previous Aurors had used to teach the class to figure out where they would be. For his seventh years, Harry would be their fourth DADA professor. Which wasn’t ideal, but still better than when he was a student. 

Neville popped his head in, “Hi Harry!” Harry and Neville had grown more familiar in the past few days. They’d taken to eating most meals together in the great hall, and hanging out in one of their flats in the evenings when their work was done. Neville and Harry had always been friends, but Harry found himself taking a lot of comfort in how much closer they’d grown in just a few days. 

Harry looked up and smiled. “Hey, Nev. Did we do vampires first or second year?” 

“Um,” Neville thought hard. “Second. We learned as much as we could have done with Lockhart as a teacher anyway.” 

Harry grimaced. Gilderoy Lockhart. Now there was a bloke he hadn’t thought about in years. “I can’t imagine I could do any worse than old Lockhart,” Harry said sardonically. 

“Blimey, Harry. At your worst you’ll still be better than Quirrell, Lockhart, Umbridge and Snape.” 

“We had some interesting ones.” 

“Yeah,” Neville chuckled. “Hey listen. Kids are getting here tomorrow. Tonight’s our last chance to get out of the castle much. Want to grab a bite in Hogsmeade? I’m heading to the Hog’s Head now. It’s been awhile since I’ve checked in on Aberforth.” 

“Sounds like a great idea,” Harry said. He stood up and stretched. He hadn’t even realized it was dinner time, he’d spent so long hunched over his work. “I think I’ve planned about as well as I could.” 

As they made their way through the nearly-empty castle, Harry asked Neville, “How often do you go to the Hog’s Head?” 

“A few times each semester. Aberforth is getting up there in age, and I like to make sure he’s well.” 

“I think it’s been two years since I’ve seen him,” Harry shook his head in amazement. “Blimey, how’s he doing?” 

“Same, really. Mentally anyway. Physically, his age is showing. But he’s a tough old nut, and I think he’ll be with us a lot longer.” 

“Good for him.” 

The Hog’s Head had barely changed since Harry was a boy at Hogwarts. The floor was dusty, the bar was disorganized, and the tables sticky. Harry loved it. 

Neville was greeted immediately by Aberforth. “My boy,” Ab said, patting Neville on the shoulder. “I haven’t seen you all summer.” Harry had never seen Aberforth Dumbledore look at someone as fondly as he did to Neville. Aberforth was even more elderly than Harry had expected. His gait was shuffled and he was shrinking and slightly hunched. Despite that, his eyes sparkled as only a Dumbledore’s could have. 

“Hey Ab,” Neville said. “The students will overtake Hogwarts tomorrow. Figured I’d better get here before I don’t have another chance.” 

Aberforth smiled and turned to Harry, “Potter. To what do I owe the pleasure?” 

“I’m at Hogwarts this year,” Harry said. “Defense Against the Dark Arts.”

“Is that right?” Aberforth asked. He turned to the two portraits on the mantle. One was of Arianna, the other was Albus Dumbledore. Dumbledore had two portraits. The first, of course, was in the headmaster’s office at Hogwarts. The Ministry wanted the other for their walls, but Dumbledore had insisted on being hung in his brother’s pub, next to his sister. “You know about this Albus?” 

“Indeed,” Dumbledore’s portrait said, smiling down at Harry and Neville. “I was in my other portrait when Mr. Potter came in to speak with Minerva about it.” 

“Well, I suppose that’ll be good for the students,” Aberforth said, wiping down a table for Harry and Neville to sit right below the portraits. “Your own kids will be your students, right?” 

“Yes,” Harry answered. “My youngest, Lily, is starting this year. Albus is in third and James in fourth.” 

“You wouldn’t want this time to spend alone with your wife?” 

“Uh, we actually got divorced,” Harry said, sounding apologetic. “It was in the  _ Prophet _ , like, a lot.” 

“Pfft,” Aberforth waved his hand dismissively. “I don’t read that tripe. So what happened?” 

“Ab,” Neville said, frowning at the same time Albus in his portrait said, “Manners.” 

Aberforth rolled his eyes. “I’m an old man now, forgive me my manners,” he said to Harry, bowing with exaggeration.  He handed both of them a menu, “Ignore my questions about your marriage, and let me get you something to eat.” 

Harry and Neville looked over their menus. “Shepherd’s pie and a pint of ale,” Neville said. 

“Sounds good,” Harry said. “I’ll have the same.” 

Neville watched as Aberforth shuffled toward the kitchen and he said in a low voice, “He’s never been one for manners, you know.” 

“It’s fine,” Harry said. “There’s something refreshing and honest about being asked outright like that.” 

“Aberforth was always forthright,” Albus said from above. “I could have learned a lot from him.”

“Professor Dumbledore,” Harry said. “Do you have any hints on teaching? I’m a little nervous about starting.” 

“Harry, I think you will be fine. After all, you are the first teacher of Dumbledore’s Army.” 

“He’s right,” Neville said, leaning toward Harry. “I wouldn’t be half the wizard I am now if it hadn’t been for you and Dumbledore’s Army.” 

“Oh, well,” Harry said dismissively, but pleased all the same. 

“You know,” Neville said, taking a sip of the ale Aberforth had brought him, “I’m awfully glad you’re here this year. I’ve been the youngest professor for years now, and the other Aurors we had for DADA were…” Neville drifted off, unsure he should insult Harry’s co-workers.

“Thought they were too good to teach?” Harry filled in for him. DADA professor was not a popular post among the Aurors. In general a person becomes an Auror for adventure and the high of taking down dark wizards. Having to deal with fourteen year olds lying about how much studying they’re doing isn’t quite the same somehow. 

“Mostly,” Neville said. “Sometimes they were nice, but usually I could tell they’d rather not be at Hogwarts.”

“Wesley Winebrand said he actually kind of liked being here,” Harry said. Wesley was a fellow Auror, a fairly close friend of Harry’s, who’d spent two years teaching DADA about five years ago. 

“Sure,” Neville said. “I liked Winebrand. I slept with him.” 

Harry choked on his ale. He coughed into his napkin, “What?” 

Neville winked, “Don’t act so shocked.” 

“I didn’t know he was gay.” Harry said. He’d known about Neville. Years ago when Neville had broken up with Hannah, he’d briefly dated a bloke named Anders who was on the Norwegian National Quidditch team, but the long-distance relationship had been too hard and they’d ended things amicably. But he hadn’t known at all about Winebrand. 

Neville shrugged and looked rather pleased with himself. “He’s bi, actually. It’s not like I’ve been celibate since Anders and I broke up. I just haven’t had anything serious. Winebrand was the closest, but I think we both knew that was only going to last as long as he was at Hogwarts.”

“Huh,” Harry said thoughtfully. “No wonder Winebrand always defends the Hogwarts position whenever anyone complains about being sent here.” 

“I mean, I’m sure there were other things he liked,” Neville said modestly. 

Harry snorted, “Getting laid on the regular is a pretty big one,” Harry said. “I should know, it’s been years since I’ve gotten any regularly.” 

“Well you were married,” Neville said. 

Harry rolled his eyes, “Ron told me he and Hermione have sex three times a week. And the only time it’s been less is when their kids were babies.”  

“OK, that’s impressive,” Neville conceded. “But now you’re not married, and you can go get laid whenever you want.” 

“It’s not that easy.” 

“Sure it is,” Neville said. “I’ve had, let’s see, eight lovers since I broke up with Anders. Some were like Wesley and we were fairly well exclusive, and a couple have been one-night-stands.” 

“When’s the last time you got some?” Harry asked. This was all news to him. He’d kind of assumed that Neville was a quiet professor-type who stayed home with his plants and his herbology journals all night long. He’d never imagined him to be a guy who chased sex. 

“Earlier this summer on a trip around Europe to get some magical plants I…” he paused. “Anyway you have to promise not to tell anyone I told you this.” Neville didn’t even know why he was telling Harry his secrets. Maybe it was the third pint, maybe it was the relief at having a friend at Hogwarts, or maybe it was the re-emergence of the crush he’d had on Harry back in fifth year. 

“I promise,” Harry said. 

“Not even Ron.  _ Especially _ not Ron.”

“I won’t tell Ron,” Harry promised. 

“I slept with Charlie Weasley when I was in Romania this summer.” 

Harry threw back his head and laughed, “I won’t tell Ron if you don’t want me to, but I can assure you it won’t bother him to hear it.” 

Molly Weasley loved that five of her six living children were married with children, and she was always trying  to Charlie to settle down with a nice girl. A few years back, Charlie had had enough of her badgering and loudly told him mother that he preferred to sow his wild oats, and while sometimes there were girls, more often than not he was sleeping with men. Molly hadn’t missed a beat and had said,  _ “You think I care? Find a nice boy to settle down with then Charlie. Hopping from bed to bed can’t be very fulfilling.”  _

_ “If you think it’s not fulfilling, Mum, I’ve got news for you.”  _

Molly had gone red, but the rest of the Weasley siblings had roared with laughter. And from then on whenever Charlie would visit (and none of the little children were around) Bill, Ron, Harry, George and Ginny would egg Charlie on, asking him for details of his various sexual exploits. 

Neville shrugged, and seemed rather pleased with himself, “Well if it ever comes up, I’ll make sure not to keep it from him.”  

“I bet Charlie’s a demon in the sack,” Harry said. Though Harry had always considered himself straight - or straight enough that he’d never have to admit to being anything else, there were times when his imagination would run wild thinking about other men, and Charlie with his broad shoulders and dragon-scarred face was front and center of his daydreams. 

“Oh Merlin,” Neville said. “You can’t even imagine.” 

Harry didn’t say anything, but all of a sudden, he  _ was  _ imagining it. Then he was replacing Charlie in his imagination with Neville, and that was a whole pot of mandrakes he didn’t want to unearth, so he shifted the subject from Charlie Weasley, “Doesn’t your Gran get on your case about settling down?” 

“Not really,” Neville said. “She’s a pretty solitary person. After my Granddad died, she actually seemed a bit happier to be living on her own. Well, there was me, but you know. I guess she thinks I’m like her.” 

“Are you?” Harry wondered out loud. 

Neville shrugged. “I dunno. I suppose I’d like a husband someday. It’s a bit tricky, being a Hogwarts professor. School takes up so much of our time and we’re required to live in the castle. Who’d want to marry a bloke who can only be home over the summer holidays?” 

“I get that.” 

“But what about you? I know you’ve only just gotten divorced, but you think getting remarried would ever be an option?” 

“Oh definitely,” Harry said. “Just because things didn’t work out with me and Ginny didn’t really sour me on marriage. I liked being part of a unit, having a partner there to share things with. I’m thirty-eight years old now though, and I know more what I’d want in a spouse.” 

“What’s that?” Neville asked seriously, leaning toward Harry in the darkened restaurant. 

“Well, Ginny and I are sort of similar. Quick to raise tempers, and I can see how that makes for a bad relationship. And you know, someone you can just talk to. So if the sex dies down, you can have a lie-down in bed and just….talk. Ginny and I didn’t communicate about certain things very well, and I would have liked to change that.” 

“What types of things?” Neville asked. 

“Well,” Harry took a sip of ale. It was a self-refilling glass and at this point he’d lost count of how many times it had filled itself back up. “To be honest, Neville, I had an awful childhood, and it made me a bit neurotic about my own kids. I was never great at explaining to Ginny why I would clean up for the kids or prepare food for them rather than make them do it themselves. But she was never great about trying to understand it either. When I’d try to get into it, she’d get impatient and tell me to work it out with a therapist.”

“Well, growing up orphaned can really fuck a wizard up,” Neville said nodding. 

“I suppose you would know too, yeah?” 

“Yeah, definitely. I can see where a lot of things I do come from having my parents die and being raised by a woman like Gran. If you ever want to talk about it, I’m here. I’m not a therapist but maybe I can relate.” 

“Thanks, Neville. I might actually do that.” 

“But for now,” Neville said, “We should definitely finish eating and get back to the castle. Early day tomorrow.” 

“I’m looking forward to it,” Harry answered with a smile. 


	2. Chapter 2

The following morning, Harry awoke early. His head was slightly foggy from the ale he and Neville had drunk with their dinner. He wanted to stay in bed, but knew he couldn’t. It was his first official day as a professor. The students were arriving this evening, and tomorrow he’d begin teaching classes.

He stretched his legs and lay in bed for a few moments in quiet contemplation. He was excited to see his kids again tonight. These last few weeks were the longest he’s gone without seeing them, except for when Jamie and Al were at Hogwarts the last few years. He missed them. He wondered where Lily would be sorted. Probably not Slytherin with Al. Lily didn’t seem like she’d fit in there. Gryffindor with Jamie was possible, so was Hufflepuff. Probably not Ravenclaw, she was smart, but of all his kids, Al was the brainiac. Harry’d been surprised two years earlier when Al wasn’t sorted into Ravenclaw. There was no figuring it out, really. Harry knew since he left Hogwarts, the sorting hat was sorting differently. Trying to break up families and place kids where they’d do well, not necessarily by their dominant personality traits. Sometimes a kid who  _ needed _ a little bravery would show up in Gryffindor, a kid who’d need a charms tutor showed up in Ravenclaw. 

His mind wandered to his time in Gryffindor, and he ended up thinking about Neville. He thought back to that first day on the Hogwarts Express when Neville lost his little toad, Trevor. Harry smiled at the memory. He wondered whatever happened to Trevor. Then he thought of Neville through the years, from taking Ginny to the Yule Ball, to beheading the last horcrux, to calling Harry and Ginny personally when Jamie, in his first year, threw a pot of bubotubers at a fifth year bully. 

These last few weeks were the longest he’d ever spent with Neville. They’d shared a dorm room for six years, but this was the most he’d ever really spent talking to with the other man. He wished he’d included Neville more in his own Hogwarts exploits when he’d been a kid. 

As his thoughts drifted around lazily, he briefly wondered why Neville was in his thoughts so much these days. 

Harry spent the morning readying his classroom, memorizing the lectures he planned for each of his first classes that week. 

The staff got together for lunch in the great hall. The last meal before the students arrived was always a bit of a celebration for the Hogwarts staff. 

McGonagall had cornered Harry and was going over his lesson plans with her. He explained how he wanted to start teaching patronuses to fourth years, rather than waiting until sixth, like the previous Auror instructors had done. She smiled grimly and agreed. “I think that’s wise,” she nodded. “It can take up to two years for an average student to be able to form a full corporeal patronus. If you start in fourth year, by the end of fifth year it can be included in O.W.Ls."

Harry was delighted, because that had been his plan all along- to make patronuses OWL level work, not NEWT level work. For NEWTS, he wanted to add a section on how to combat Horcruxes and other spells designed for immortality. McGonagall agreed, and seemed excited that the Aurors had finally given them a professor who cared so deeply about the subject. 

Neville and Hagrid also regaled Harry with stories about traveling through Europe. Hagrid, in search of creatures for his Hogwarts menagerie, or at least good stories for his Care of Magical Creatures students, and Neville in search of magical plants. 

The camaraderie was almost enough to keep Harry from mulling over the fact that his kids were on the Hogwarts Express, and in just hours, he’d get to see them again. 

The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur. Harry met with Professor Flitwick to discuss defensive charms, visited Kreacher in the kitchens to say hello, and helped Neville move some of his plants around in one of the greenhouses.

By that evening, the weather had cooled, and the staff were sitting at the front table of the great hall, watching as the students began entering and taking their seats at the four long house tables.  He spotted Jamie immediately, center of a large group of Gryffindors. Jamie grinned and waved up at his dad. 

Harry turned his attention to the Slytherin table, and saw Albus sitting with his best friend Scorpius, deep in conversation. Harry stared, trying to will Al to look his way, but it was Scorpius who noticed him first. Scorpius grinned and waved at Harry, then poked Al in the side. Al looked up and gave Harry a small smile and a quick wave before turning his attention back to Scorpius. 

Eventually, Hagrid led the first years into the Great Hall. He noticed Lily and Hugo, easily distinguishable with their bright red hair, immediately. Lily broke into a smile, waved and mouthed “Hi Dad!” to him. Harry grinned and waved back. 

The sorting went as smoothly as ever. The Sorting Hat kept his song short this year, which Neville told him had been the case ever since the war. Student after student, all in alphabetical order, came to put the hat on their head. Harry recognized some last names. Ernie MacMillan’s son Jacob was placed in Hufflepuff, and Oliver Wood’s daughter Ramona was placed in Gryffindor. Lily Luna Potter seemed happy enough to be placed in Gryffindor, but frowned when Hugo Weasley was sorted into Hufflepuff. 

Harry never cared what house his kids were in, no matter how much Al didn’t seem to believe him. He trusted the sorting hat, and as he clapped, he knew that Gryffindor was right for Lily, and Hufflepuff was right for Hugo 

_________________   
  


The first week of classes passed in a blur. Harry was shocked to find how tiring teaching was. It was more exhausting than being an Auror. As an Auror, Harry’s workload was 90% paperwork and investigations, and only 10% physicality and excitement. But standing in front of several classes a day, on a stone floor and keeping the attention of hundreds of teenagers? He had no idea how exhausted he’d be. He had no idea that he’d fall into bed before eleven o’clock most nights and sleep deeply until his alarm went off the next morning at six thirty. 

That Friday evening, there was a knock on Harry’s door. He answered it and found Neville standing there, grin on his face, and holding a bottle of brandy with two glasses. “Could you use a drink?” he asked. 

Harry opened the door to allow Neville into his small flat. “How’d you know?” 

Neville laughed, “I remember my first week. I had no idea it’d be like this.” 

“Suddenly I have a lot more appreciation for the professors when I was a student here,” Harry admitted. Then he thought about Umbridge and Lockhart and snorted. “Well, some of them anyway.” 

Harry and Neville settled into chairs by the fire, and Neville opened the brandy and poured two drinks, handing one to Harry. “To the first week,” he said, holding his glass up. 

Harry tapped his glass to Neville’s and repeated, “To the first week.” 

They drank silently for a moment, and Neville asked, “So how was it?” 

“Tiring,” Harry said. “But I like it. I think I’m getting a feel for it. The students seem interested in DADA.” 

“Well, they’re interested in having Harry Potter as a professor anyway,” Neville said. 

“Nah,” Harry said, dismissively. “They know me more as Jamie’s and Al’s and Lily’s dad.” 

Neville snorted, “You can’t possibly think that’s true.” 

“Well,” Harry shrugged. “The war was a long time ago.” 

Neville rolled his eyes, “There’s a whole chapter devoted to you on the newest edition of History of Magic, Harry. Written by old Bathilda’s great-niece. Binns is finally using the updated text to teach the class. You’re famous.” 

“I know I’m famous,” Harry said. “It’s just….kids don’t care about that so much, do they?” 

“I can’t decide if you’re being humble or thick,” Neville joked. 

“Probably thick,” Harry admitted, and Neville laughed again. 

“How’ve you liked having your kids in class?” 

“It’s funny, because they all talked to me after their first classes. They all seemed happy to see me, but so much more interested in getting back to their friends.” Harry shrugged, “I suppose I shouldn’t take it so personally. Al even lectured me on treating him just like any other student.” 

“He’s a good kid,” Neville said. “Smart as hell and not a bit of trouble from him like I’ve had with Jamie.” 

“Yeah,” Harry nodded. “Jamie’s a handful. Takes after his Uncle George, I suppose. Al’s quiet and thoughtful. I’ll never quite understand what the hat was thinking, sorting him into Slytherin.” 

“You’ll find a lot less of the traditional personalities in the houses now,” Neville said. “I think the Sorting Hat changed his technique a bit in the last decade.” 

“That’s what I’ve noticed,” Harry said. “Hugo in Hufflepuff?”  

“He might surprise you,” Neville said. “Lots of kids don’t come into their own until a much later age.” 

Harry looked at Neville for a moment, as he realized Neville meant that on a very personal level. Because that’s how it’d been for him, wasn’t it? Neville hadn’t seemed like a Gryffindor at all. Early on, it was questionable he even belonged at Hogwarts. But by fifth year, he’d shown them all exactly where he belonged, and by seventh his bravery and talent had been on full display. 

“You’re right,” Harry agreed. “You never know what the future has in store.” 

___________

As excited as Harry had been to see his kids every day, he actually didn’t see them that often. He saw all three of them in class for an hour twice a week, of course. But besides that and seeing them in the Great Hall at meals, they rarely crossed paths. 

In early October, Harry decided he’d go watch Jamie at tryouts for the Gryffindor quidditch team. At fourteen, Jamie was already an inch or two taller than Harry, and didn’t have the slight build of most seekers. No, he took after his mum and was trying out for chaser. He’d been the reserve chaser for Gryffindor his third year, but with the graduation of two other chasers, he was hopeful to get a spot. 

Harry made his way down to the pitch to watch the Gryffindor flyers. He knew Jamie was a good player, and was confident in his ability to make the team. Sure enough, Jamie put more goals through the hoops than any other kid trying out for the team. It shouldn’t have surprised Harry; Jamie had spent most of the summer on his broom in their back garden.

“Dad?” Harry turned and was surprised to see Al standing there.

“Al!” Harry said. “Did you come to watch Jamie too?” 

“What? No. I wanted to see you.” 

Harry patted the bleacher seat next to him. “What do you need?” 

“I don’t want to make you mad,” Al said, sounding very apologetic. 

Harry paused, because normally Jamie was the one who’d done something to make him mad. It’d be very unlike Al to misbehave. “O...kay,” Harry said slowly, bracing himself for something bad. 

“I don’t want to try out for Quidditch.” 

Harry let out a breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding. “Oh, Al. That’s fine. Why do you think that would make me mad?” Harry was relieved, but also worried about his son. What could have made Al think this was something to apologize for? 

“Well, it’s just you and mum are so good. And we’re such a Quidditch kind of family.” 

“Al, listen to me,” Harry said seriously and turned to give his son his complete attention. “Just because your mum and I like Quidditch, and Jamie does too, does  _ not _ mean you have to. I want you to find something you like and do that. I promise, I will support you in whatever you want to do.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Al smiled. “I think Scorpius and I want to start a chess club.” 

“Is that so?” 

“Yeah. We’re both good, and if we can get at least two players from each house, we can have a tournament and everything.” 

“I think that sounds brilliant,” Harry said. “I’m sure Rosie would want to join for Ravenclaw.” 

“Well, all clubs and teams need a professor who will oversee them.” 

“Are you asking me?” Harry asked.

“Well,” Al fiddled with the clasp on his backpack, “Flitwick seems like the obvious choice because he’s a former wizard chess champ. But he already runs the gobstones club. Plus, you know, you’re my dad."

“I’m not the player Flitwick is,” Harry warned. “I’m not even half as good as Uncle Ron.” 

“Yeah, but,” Al looked up at him, eyes bright. “You’re my dad.” 

Harry broke into a grin. “I would be honored to help you and Scorpius start a wizard chess club.”

Just then Beatrice O’Malley, captain of the Gryffindor team yelled, “Here are the names of the Gryffindor Quidditch Team!” Harry and Al clapped together when Jamie’s name was announced as chaser. 

__________

“That’s so sweet,” Neville said. He was in Harry’s flat the Friday after Gryffindor tryouts and Harry’d just told him about Al asking him to head up the Wizard Chess Club. 

Harry and Neville had taken to getting together for drinks every Friday evening to discuss their weeks. They ate most of their meals together in the Great Hall, and saw each other throughout the day. And still, they were ready for hours of talking come Friday night. 

“Yeah. I’m pants at chess compared to Ron, so I don’t know how much help I’ll be. But Al’s brilliant. He can probably run the whole club by himself.” 

“Who would have guessed a Potter and a Malfoy would be starting something as innocent as a chess club together?” 

“It’s weird how good Scorp is for Al, isn’t it?” 

“They’re good for each other, honestly.” Neville said. “Their first year was a bit rocky at first for poor Scorpius. He definitely had that ‘Son of a Deatheater’ target on his back. But a Potter befriending him right away really helped.” 

“And Al always had a bit of trouble fitting in with us. My other kids are such loudmouths, Ginny and I are, well, famous, and he’s so quiet and introspective. I was afraid he would resent us. But that first year here and that friendship with Scorpius really seemed to pull him out of his shell.”

“Do you have a favorite kid?” Neville asked. 

Harry laughed. “What?” 

Neville took a sip of brandy, “Do you have a favorite kid? I always thought parents must.” He fiddled with his brandy glass. 

“Um,” Harry said, wondering how to answer that question. “It’s a bit complicated. Because I love all my kids equally, but my other emotions toward them differ between them.” 

“Like how?” Neville asked. 

“Well, worrying is one way of showing love. And I’ve always worried about Al the most, because he seemed unhappy. So my other two probably think I love him the most because I spend more time fretting about him and trying to appease him. Then Lily is so affectionate, and still likes to hug me and be carried around on my back, so then my boys probably think I favor her because I don’t physically touch them as much. Then Jamie is such a firecracker and even though he misbehaves, I have to admit parenting him is a lot of fun. So we play a lot together, and that probably makes the other two feel like I favor him.” 

“So you can’t win.” 

“All I can do is hope as they grow up, they’ll see how it is I feel about them.” 

“You’re a good dad, Harry Potter.” 

Harry looked at Neville, surprised to see so much affection and fondness in his eyes. Harry smiled softly. “Thanks.” 

___________   
  


The turnout for the initial meeting of the chess club was higher than Harry thought. It was proof that there was a need for more intellectual clubs in the school, maybe a little less focus on Quidditch. 

Harry had asked Flitwick for assistance. Not because he didn’t think he could run a club by himself, but because he really wasn’t as good at chess as Al was. Flitwick had offered to take on the club himself, but when Harry had explained that Al wanted this thing to be with his dad, Flitwick had understood. 

There were six Ravenclaw students, Four each from Hufflepuff and Slytherin, and only two from Gryffindor. It would take a little brain power to figure out how to do a tournament, but Harry was up for the challenge. 

He started the club by thanking Al and Scorpius for their idea, and explained that they would be meeting twice a month for club meetings and to get to play against other students outside their houses. Any chess questions could be directed to Flitwick, any club business questions to Harry. 

He broke the students up by level of chess experience, and had them start playing. Harry took the beginners, because he did have enough knowledge to teach the basics of the game, while Flitwick took the kids with more experience. 

Harry was rewarded at the end of the meeting with a hug from Al, and a high-five from Scorpius, who ran out of the room shouting their thanks. 

“I’d have loved to have Albus in Ravenclaw, you know,” Flitwick said to Harry, as they finished clearing up the chess boards, and repairing the poor pawns that had been obliterated by their opponents.  

“I thought that’s where he was headed,” Harry admitted. 

“But I suppose he is doing well where he is,” Flitwick said. “He’s very quiet and modest about his brains. I’m not sure that’s much of a Ravenclaw trait.” 

Harry had to laugh. His favorite Ravenclaw ever was Luna Lovegood, and she didn’t fit that stereotype at all. But then, she had been a different kind of smart than most people would consider. “It was a bit of a scandal when he was placed in Slytherin,” Harry admitted to his old professor. “People thought it was just plain wrong, that I’d be angry at him or at the system and that he’d buckle under the pressure. At first, I was afraid he couldn’t stand up to the scrutiny. But he surprised us all.” 

“That’s the best part, isn’t it? When your kids surprise you. I have a few students every year I’m sure are misplaced, but it always works out in the end.” 

Every time someone brought up house misplacement, Harry’s mind always drifted towards Neville. Not for the first time since he was back at Hogwarts, Harry was reminded at how much a Hufflepuff everyone thought Neville was, and how he’d proved Gryffindor was his home. Maybe this chess club was the ambitious part of Al’s Slytherin placement finally coming out. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nanowrimo starts soon, which might fuck with my plans on posting here, depending how long I last at Nano without throwing in the towel. (Eighth time participating. I've won exactly once, so not the best Nano track record for me.)

The end of October brought the first Hogsmeade weekend for the students. That Friday evening, when Harry and Neville were having their weekly drinks in Neville’s flat, Neville asked Harry, “Why don’t you come with me tomorrow to stand watch over the Shrieking Shag?” 

Harry choked on his drink, “I’m sorry, what?” 

“Oh, I forgot you didn’t know. The shrieking shack isn’t “haunted” anymore,” Neville used finger quotes around the word haunted. “So students started using it as a place to have sex on Hogsmeade weekends. They started calling it the Shrieking Shag instead of the Shrieking Shack. A couple years ago, some parents found out about it and pitched a fit with McGonagall. So now all the professors take it in turns to hang out by the Shack on Hogsmeade weekends to keep the kids out.” 

Harry couldn’t help but laugh. There were times in sixth year he definitely would have taken the opportunity with Ginny to sneak out and have sex. “Yeah, sure,” Harry said. The Shack held some pretty bad memories for him, and overall he’d prefer to avoid the place altogether. But he liked hanging out with Neville. He decided not to think too hard about why he was willing to spend an entire afternoon confronting bad memories at the Shack if it meant spending more time with Neville. 

Shortly after breakfast, Harry and Neville left the castle together and headed up towards Hogsmeade Village. The morning was sunny but brisk. Harry and Neville burrowed into their jackets and had their hands shoved into their pockets as they made their way to the Shrieking Shack. 

“There’s a fallen tree that makes a nice bench,” Neville said, pointing to an area deeper in the woods where the Shack was still visible. 

They sat quietly for a while, chatting idly about their weeks, about their students, about the chess club and anything else that came to mind. Harry tried to keep it light, but his mind was distracted with the darkness that came with seeing the Shack again. In all honesty, it was a building he’d like to never see again. If it burnt to the ground, he’d be quite alright with that.

No student came by for a long while, and Neville went into the village to get them a couple of coffees to warm their bodies. While Harry waited for them, he took the time to stare at the building, reminding himself that it was just a building and that the memories of it didn’t have to control him. 

Harry spied a couple of third year Hufflepuff boys coming around the bend, talking animatedly. Harry kept quiet, trying to hear what they were saying. He could hear one saying, “...used to be the most haunted house in Britain! But something happened and Professor Snape died here and now it’s not anymore. I dunno.” 

Harry held his tongue. He didn’t want to frighten off the boys, both of whom were his students. And nothing the boy was saying was exactly incorrect. Well, the Shack had never actually been haunted, but it had been  _ considered _ haunted. 

Neville had said their job was to stop students from shagging at the Shack, and these thirteen year old boys, on their first ever Hogsmeade trip, were obviously just having a look around. So Harry continued to watch them quietly. They weren’t doing anything wrong. He watched as they looked in the windows and theorized about what actually happened to the ghosts that used to live there. Everything from Snape taking them to the afterlife with him when he died, to them being scared into permanent death by Voldemort, to the stories about it being haunted were exaggerated to begin with. Harry almost had to smile at that last one, because of how close to the truth it was. 

Still, if only those little boys, not even born when Snape was killed, knew the truth, they’d be shocked at how dark the wizarding world was for those few years. 

The boys eventually gave up, and started walking down the path right as Neville was walking back toward Harry, two coffees and a paper sack in his hands. “Hello Professor Longbottom!” they called cheerfully as Neville nodded to them. 

“Coffee and scones,” Neville said, as he handed Harry one of the cups. Then he sat down next to Harry, much closer than he had been sitting before. Their knees bumped and Harry’s heart skipped a beat. 

They sipped their coffee and ate their scones quietly for a while, before Neville spoke up. “I’m sorry.” 

“What for?” Harry asked. 

“I shouldn’t have asked you to come here. I forgot this place might have some bad memories for you.” 

“S’okay,” Harry murmured. 

Neville shook his head. “Blimey, Harry. The way your face looked when I came back up here. You were glaring at the Shack like you’d be happy to tear it apart plank by plank with your bare hands."

“Yeah, well.” Harry took a sip of coffee and stared at the Shack. “Like you said, it’s just bad memories. But that’s all in the past, right?” 

“Wanna talk about it?” Neville asked. “I don’t even know the whole story of what happened here except that it’s where Voldemort killed Snape.”

Harry paused for a few moments. He said nothing as he took another sip of his coffee and chewed his lip thoughtfully. Neville waited patiently. Harry knew he could tell Neville he didn’t want to talk about it, and Neville would respect that. The problem was, that he spent an awful lot of time trying not to talk about the past, and sometimes it welled up in him and had to come out.  “It’s not just Snape dying here,” Harry said finally. 

“Mm-hmm,” Neville said. 

“Third year, this is where I met Sirius for the first time. Well, first time since I was a baby. Here is where I learned he and Remus were truly my parents friends. It’s where we discovered Pettigrew. You know the Wormtail story, right?” 

“Scabbers,” Neville said, nodding. 

“Yeah, well I made the decision right here in this shack to not allow Remus and Sirius to kill Wormtail. And he ended up escaping and one thing led to another and a year later Voldemort was back and Cedric Diggory was dead.”

“Harry,” Neville said, a pleading tone in his voice. “Please tell me you don’t feel responsible for that.” 

“I don’t feel responsible, exactly” Harry volunteered. “But not entirely  _ not  _ responsible either, if you know what I mean.” 

“It’s not-” 

Harry cut him off, “My fault. Yeah, I know. Wormtail could have changed and he didn’t and that’s on him, not me. I know that, Nev. In my head I know it, but how I feel about it is a different story.” 

“All right,” Neville said in his mild way, not arguing the point further. Harry wondered if Neville was placating him.  

“So then we get to the night of the battle. And Voldemort and I had this connection, in our minds. I could see his feelings, and the more emotional he got, the more clearly I could see what he was up to. He was here, with Nagini and Snape. All Voldemort wanted was control of the elder wand, which he mistakenly thought belonged to Snape.” 

Neville made a “tsk,” sound with his mouth, but he remained otherwise quiet, listening patiently. 

“Me, Ron and Hermione ran here, using the underground passage. Snape was-” Harry broke off. “There was no way he was going to make it out if here alive, and I’m not sure at what point he understood what was happening. I think it was before I did, anyway. I saw the whole thing.” He took a deep breath. 

“You don’t have to keep talking,” Neville assured him. 

But Harry was on a roll. It had been years since he talked about this with anyone. Ginny was probably the last person he’d told about it, and he was all of nineteen years old at the time. She was only eighteen and was dealing with her own traumas from the year before and the death of her brother, and hadn’t known how to help Harry. 

“When it came down to it, the power of the wand was the only thing Voldemort wanted. He thought it was the only thing that could save him. So he set Nagini on Snape,”

Neville gasped. “I didn’t know that. I always assumed he just used Avada Kedavra.” 

“No,” Harry said. “Nagini got him right here,” Harry held his fingers up to his neck. “Voldemort turned his back and walked away before Snape died. And I came out of my hiding spot and collected Snape’s memories. That’s how I found out that he knew my mum when they were kids. That he loved her when they were teenagers.”

Neville shifted uncomfortably. Neville hated Snape. Harry had seen the way Neville blanched when Albus had been born and Harry told him the baby’s name. 

“I hated the bastard,” Harry said, as if he knew he had to explain himself to Neville. “Truly, he was a horrible person. But I gave Al the middle name of Severus not to honor him. But to honor what he could have been.” 

“A reminder to be better?” Neville said. 

“Exactly,” Harry said. “My feelings toward Snape are so complicated. I’d need about five years of sessions with a mental-wellness healer to parse out my feelings. But I knew there had to be something in him, somewhere, under the meanness and nastiness. There was a lonely little boy and I was a lonely little boy once.” 

“Al’s middle name should have been Harry,” Neville said. 

“Huh?” Harry asked, broken out of the trance-like memories he’d been in. 

“Sorry,” Neville said, apologetic grin on his face. “If you wanted to give your kid a middle name to honor how a lonely little boy  _ can _ grow up to be honorable, you didn’t need to look any further than yourself.” 

Harry opened up his mouth to speak, but no words would come. He was rendered speechless by the compliment Neville had just given him. After reliving a few darker moments of his life, he had no idea how hearing that one little compliment could make him so pleased he could feel his whole face flush. “Well,” is all he could think of to say, as he set his empty coffee cup on the ground at his feet.

Neville also set his coffee down, and scooted another inch over, so he and Harry were that much closer. Their shoulders now bumping along with their knees. Neville put his arm behind Harry. “Harry,” he said, his voice quiet. 

Harry turned and looked at Neville. They made eye contact for a few moments, and the realization hit Harry like a ton of bricks. The things he’d been trying for weeks now to ignore in his head suddenly jumped front and center in his brain, refusing to be put away. 

_ Neville is going to kiss me, and I want him to,  _ Harry thought. 

Harry licked his lips, his eyes traveling from Neville’s eyes down to his mouth. His heart was thumping, and even though it was cold, he felt like all his nerves were on fire. Blimey, he didn’t remember the last time he’d ever felt like this. 

Neville considered Harry’s face, then suddenly snapped his head back and scooted away a few inches, cleared his throat, and grabbed his coffee cup off the ground. 

Harry’s confusion lasted less than a second when he realized Neville had seen two students walking up the path toward the Shack. Harry and Neville quietly watched the seventh years, hand in hand, wandering around the Shack, jiggling the door and trying to get in.  Harry recognized them from his classes, Jessica a Hufflepuff and Owen in Ravenclaw. Finally, taking pity on them, Neville called out, “It’s locked, you know. Private property.” 

“Oh!” The Jessica said, her cheeks turning pink at having been spied by two professors. “Right, well you know this place has a lot of interesting history and we were just curious.” 

“Oh, you like history?” Neville asked pleasantly, happy to play ignorant about what Jessica and Owen were  _ really  _  up to. 

“Uh-huh,” the girl nodded. 

“Professor Potter, you probably know about this place,” Owen said. 

“Sure,” he said, leaning back on his hands, trying very hard to look nonchalant and not at all like a man whose heart was racing because he’d  just almost kissed his male colleague.

“Does the supposed haunting have something to do with Dark Arts?” 

Technically, the “hauntings” of the Shrieking Shack had been caused by Remus, a werewolf. And Harry had insisted werewolves be removed from the Defense Against the Dark Arts curriculum. (“They aren’t dark creatures, they’re humans with an illness,” he raged to the Head of the Department for Magical Education at the Ministry.) So, no those weren’t Dark Arts.

But Voldemort using a horcrux to kill Snape? That was Dark Arts all right. 

“Yes,” Harry answered after considering it for a moment. 

“Will you teach us about it?” 

“No,” Harry said. “I can’t without going into a lot of complicated magical history, a lot of it really personal to me.” 

Owen looked disappointed. 

“But,” Harry went on, “I promise you that what you’re learning in Defense Against the Dark Arts will protect you from things that have happened here.” 

Owen and Jessica accepted Harry’s answer and called for them to have a good afternoon as they walked back down that path. They didn’t seem too bothered to have had their plans for sex interrupted. Harry had actually been grateful for Owen and Jessica. Imagine what would have happened if he and Neville kissed. What a bad idea  _ that _ would’ve been. 

Harry and Neville did not resume their closeness on the fallen log. When Neville sat back down it was with a good six inches of space between them, and they continued to chat idly about nothing important, and broke up the good time of one more couple heading up the Shack. 

Harry said a silent thanks to the universe for their interrupted moment. Harry wasn’t even sure where his desire for Neville was coming from. Was he just really horny or something? Was he just lonely? He had to stop thinking about it. He had to put it out of his mind. Even if he really fancied Neville, they were co-workers. They were old friends. Why ruin a perfectly good, friendly, work relationship with personal mess?

Harry made a pact with himself as he and Neville headed back toward the castle late that afternoon. He was  _ not _ going to allow himself to fancy Neville Longbottom. This year, and possibly the next were about spending time at Hogwarts, seeing his kids on a near-daily basis, and imparting the knowledge he’d gained about defending oneself against Dark Magic. 

There was no time or reason to get in a relationship, especially not a same-sex relationship because my god, the _ Prophet _ would have a fucking field day with that. 

Eventually, if Harry kept talking himself out of wanting to kiss Neville, he might finally think it was the right thing to do. 

But that night, as Harry crawled into bed, he thought back to how close they’d come. How they’d looked into each other eyes, and how Harry’s eyes traveled over Neville’s handsome and eager face. He had to wonder what it would have been like to kiss him. 

The mere thought stirred something in Harry, and he placed his palm over the growing bulge in his boxer shorts. God, it’d been so long since simply thinking about a kiss had gotten him hard. He knew he should roll over and forget about it and go to sleep, but he didn’t. He pushed his boxers down, grabbed his cock and started stroking. 

Then when it was all over, he promised himself he’d stop thinking of Neville that way.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My goal was to get this posted before Nano starts, and I made it! By twelve hours! Anyway, unless I completely give up on Nano mid-November, this will probably be the last chapter posted until early December. In the end, I expect this will be about ten chapters or so. Thanks for reading!

Part of Harry wanted to go out of his way to avoid Neville. It was a little embarrassing to find yourself having a crush on an old childhood friend who is now a co-worker. He was embarrassed for himself and wasn’t anxious to make an ass out of himself by accidentally flirting with Neville. 

But the other part of Harry knew that he wouldn’t be able to avoid Neville. They worked together, they ate lunch together, and hung out with each other many evenings a week. Not talking to Neville was out of the question. 

The only thing to do was to forget about it. Neville hadn’t brought up their near-kiss at the Shrieking Shack the weekend before, and Harry started to feel that perhaps he was imagining it. Perhaps Neville really had been doing nothing more than comforting Harry, upset after talking about the deaths of Sirius, Remus, and Snape. 

So Harry never brought it up, and they continued to hang out with each other and while Harry found himself noticing more how handsome Neville was, or how beautiful his broad shoulders looked in his greenhouse robes, it actually wasn’t all-consuming. He managed to hold back on his desire to hold Neville’s hand, or sling an arm behind his back while they were seated side by side at the staff table. He simply tried to act as he always did, and found it quite easy. 

The weekend after the Shrieking Shack incident was the first Quidditch match of the season, Gryffindor vs. Hufflepuff. 

The last vestiges of warmth were gone by the time the game weekend rolled around. The students were bundled in their cloaks and earmuffs, as they made their way down to the pitch. Harry and Neville headed down together. 

As head of Gryffindor House, Neville was openly cheering for Gryffindor. McGonagall had pulled Harry aside and warned him that, even though he was a Gryffindor, and his son was playing for Gryffindor, she wanted him to cheer for both sides. Professors who weren’t heads of houses were supposed to be impartial at Quidditch matches. He begrudgingly agreed. 

Harry and Neville sat next to each other in the Gryffindor section, and Harry was pleased that Lily made her way up to the top row of bleachers to sit next to him. He’d hardly seen her outside of class, and it felt special to have his daughter there with him. 

Lily snuggled into his side for warmth as the game started. Harry smiled and planted a kiss on the top of her head. Lily was his most affectionate child, and he did not look forward to the day when she stopped curling up into his side, or falling asleep on his shoulders. 

It was obvious from the beginning that it was Gryffindor’s game. While Harry politely applauded when Hufflepuff scored, he couldn’t help but cheer a little louder when Jamie was the one scoring for Gryffindor. And it turned out, he scored a lot. Harry and Ginny played plenty of Quidditch with all of their kids, so they knew Jamie had talent. But this was pretty shocking for a fourth year student in his first year on the team. 

Beyond the feeling of pride he got whenever Jamie made a terrific play, (and it wasn’t just scoring, he had a knack for passing the quaffle to his teammates at just the right time) there was something so warm and domestic feeling about sitting shoulder to shoulder with Neville on one side, and his daughter leaning on his other. It felt….familial, and something Harry tried to enjoy without thinking about too hard. He couldn’t waste time thinking about it, because him and Neville? Never going to happen. 

Even though Gryffindor was outplaying Hufflepuff easily, the snitch proved to be a bastard to catch. After nearly two hours of play, Gryffindor was up on Hufflepuff by a score of 280-60. Both seekers were working overtime chasing the little winged ball. Finally though, Emilie Collette, Gryffindor’s seeker managed to get her fingers around the snitch and ended the game. Of the twenty eight goals scored by Gryffindor, Jamie had scored fifteen of them. 

Despite his promise to McGonagall, Harry cheered loudly at the end of the game, the Gryffindor team flying to the ground and jumping up and down, hugging each other. He couldn’t keep the big grin off his face. He and Neville hugged, not in an intimate way, but in the way two friends watching a sports match would after their team won. Then they made their way down to the pitch to congratulate the team. 

Harry gave Jamie a big hug, “You were brilliant!” 

Jamie laughed, “Thanks dad. It’s all because you and mum flew with us so much this summer.” 

Harry had to grin; that hadn’t been time wasted. Harry left Jamie and Lily with their housemates running back up to the castle. He remembered enough of his winning matches while he was a student at Hogwarts to know that there would be an all-day party in the common room. It was something he didn’t need to see, and frankly, he didn’t want to know what Jamie could get up to when he wasn’t looking. 

“What’re you up to the rest of the day?” Neville asked Harry, as the quidditch stadium emptied out from around them.

“Grading,” Harry answered with a sigh. “I assigned long essays for my second, third, fifth and sixth years all due yesterday without realizing how many essays that means for me to read and mark this weekend.” 

Neville laughed, “Rookie mistake. You need to spread those essays out.” 

“How about you? What are you doing?” 

“Also marking papers,” Neville answered. “But only my sixth and seventh years, so not as much work as you. I’m going to do my papers at the foot of Gryffindor tower so I can keep an ear out on the ruckus sure to be going on in the common room. If you want to join me?” 

Harry bit his lip. He really did want to give Jamie and Lily space to be normal Hogwarts students, without their dad hovering over them. But on the other hand, he hated passing up an opportunity to spend with Neville, even just silently sitting side-by-side working on separate things. “You’re head of Gryffindor house,” Harry explained. “You have to keep an eye on them. I don’t want my kids thinking I’m not giving them space.” 

“I get it,” Neville said quickly. “I’ll swing by your office before dinner, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Harry said. He’d probably do a better job reading the essays without Neville there as a distraction anyway. 

_______

Harry’s eyes were practically crossed from reading so many essays. With just one short break for dinner, he’d spent the entire rest of the day marking papers. He’d gotten through all the second year essays on Cornish Pixies, and had started on the third year essays on minor jinxes when he’d had enough. It wasn’t even that late, only 11 pm, but he couldn’t take it anymore. He showered and went to bed. 

Sometime later, he was awoken by a knocking on the door to his small flat. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Harry was prone to nightmares, so it took him a few moments to gather his bearings and make sure this was happening in real life, not in a dream. The knock came again and Harry grabbed his wand from his bedside table, pointed it at the door and unlocked it. “Come in,” he croaked as he put his glasses on. 

Neville stuck his head in, “Sorry to wake you, Harry.” 

“Nev,” Harry said. Neville coming in his flat in the middle of the night? This wasn’t a nightmare at all. He pulled himself into a sitting position. “What’s going on?” 

Neville stepped in. He hesitated before saying, “We normally don’t notify parents over minor things like this.” 

Harry’s mind went from sleep groggy to alert immediately. “What’s happened? What did Jamie do?” 

Neville looked at him, mouth agape. “How’d you know it was Jamie?” 

“I know my kids,” Harry said dryly. “It’s always Jamie.” 

Neville laughed a bit, “Well, it’s not a huge deal, like I said we normally wouldn’t even call parents about something like this. But since you’re here, I didn’t want you to be blindsided by gossip tomorrow.” 

“What is it?” Harry wasn’t sure whether to be worried about or angry at his son.

“Jamie was caught out of bed, out of the common room after curfew.”

“OK,” Harry said. That wasn’t too bad. 

“With a girl,” Neville finished. 

“Oh.” Harry said, then in a moment of understanding, “Ooooh. Who?” 

“Emilie Collette,” Neville answered. Emilie was a fifth year Gryiffindor, seeker on the Quidditch team. 

“I hate to ask what they were doing,” Harry said. 

“They were having a bit of a snog,” Neville said, then paused, “In your classroom.” 

“What the fuck? A bit of a snog or a proper shag?” Harry asked. 

“Their clothes were still on,” Neville assured him. “Well, her shirt was a bit,” Neville tugged at the front of his own shirt, indicating it had been loosened, “It seemed fairly innocent, all things considered.” 

“Innocent,” Harry huffed. “He’s not even fifteen years old!” 

“Well,” Neville shrugged. “It’s not the most uncommon thing, us finding fourth and fifth years having a snog in empty classrooms or wherever.” 

“Fourth years?” Harry asked, incredulous. He couldn’t even bring himself to talk to Cho Chang without stammering in his fourth year. Where did Jamie get such confidence to snog a girl a year older than himself? “What should I do?” Wearing only his boxer shorts, he pulled his bedcovers back and stood up.

“Nothing,” Neville said. 

“My fourteen year old kid was out of bed, snogging a girl in  _ my _ classroom, and I’m supposed to do nothing about it?” Harry grabbed his trousers and pulled them on, like he was going to march into the Gryffindor common room and give Jamie a scolding. 

“Stay here,” Neville said. “Yes, you’re supposed to do nothing. If you weren’t a professor here, you wouldn’t even know about this. I’m telling you as a courtesy.” 

“What’s happened to them?” Harry asked, ignoring Neville’s request about staying put. He pulled up his zipper and began searching for his tee-shirt. 

“I’m the head of Gryffindor house and they both got detentions and I took twenty points from Gryffindor for each of them.” 

Harry didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t prepared for this part of parenthood. Sure, Jamie had hit puberty a couple years earlier, and he was easily three inches taller than his father at this point, but this? Teddy had been in sixth year before girls became a thing. Why was Jamie doing this so much earlier? “I want to talk to him,” he said angrily. 

“I said stay put,” Neville said. His voice was quiet, but he managed to convey an air of authority. “It won’t do any good to go off half-cocked at your kid.”

Harry huffed, “He can’t just be….” he waved his hands around, trying to find the right words.

“Kissing girls?” 

Harry stopped for a moment. He realized how stupid it was to get mad at Jamie over kissing a girl, but that didn’t make him any less agitated. He’d known from the time Jamie was a year old that he was going to be the little rule-breaker, and Harry knew he had it coming. “He can’t just be wandering the castle at night breaking into  _ my _ fucking classroom,” Harry supplied. 

“Look,” Neville said, his voice straining with patience. “In the grand scheme of what kids can get up to, this is  _ not  _ a big deal. A few years ago, I was on night patrol and heard something from an empty classroom and walked in on two seventh years having a proper shag, right on the floor.” 

“Oh Merlin, that’ll be Jamie in a few years.” 

“Go back to bed,” Neville ordered, “And you can talk to Jamie tomorrow.  _ Talk _ to him, because he’s already got detention and lost house points.” 

Harry took a deep breath and sat back down on his bed. Neville hovered over him, looking as though he couldn’t quite trust Harry to get back in bed and not run to the Gryffindor common room to give Jamie a proper telling off. “I’m fine,” Harry said, holding his hands up in surrender. “I’ll go back to bed.” As if to prove it, he unzipped his trousers and pulled them off. 

Neville laughed a little, “OK,” he said. “Just, stay calm. I promise this isn’t that big a deal.” 

“You can say that,” Harry pointed out. “I’m the one who’d be a thirty eight year old Grandpa if he goes and gets a girl pregnant.” 

“No one ever got pregnant from a bit of making out,” Neville assured him. 

Harry cocked an eyebrow, “Says the gay bloke who never has to worry about pregnancy,” he added dryly. 

Neville laughed at that. “One of the benefits,” he said. “Go to sleep. I’m going to as well. We both have long days of marking papers ahead of us.” 

Despite feeling agitated, Harry managed to fall back to sleep. The thing was, he couldn’t really explain his agitation to begin with. Partly it was sadness at his kids growing up, and definitely there was a lot of worry there, and maybe it was that he was constantly afraid Jamie’s behavior would reflect poorly on him, which was stupid, but still. 

The next morning, Harry knelt in front of his fireplace and floo-called Ginny. 

“Gin?” he called out from the kitchen fireplace of 12 Grimmauld Place. 

He could hear footsteps running down the stairs toward the kitchen, and a few seconds later, Ginny, in her bathrobe, was kneeling in front of him. “Harry? Is everything OK?” 

“We’ve got a problem.” 

Ginny sighed, “What did Jamie do?” 

Harry gave her the rundown of what had happened the night before. Ginny listened closely, and when Harry was done, she leaned back on her haunches. “Well, that’s not that bad.” 

“Gin. It’s not good.” 

Ginny shrugged. “I was in fourth year when I snogged Michael Corner.” 

“Yeah, but Neville said this girls’ shirt was loose, like Jamie had been up in it.” 

Ginny looked at Harry blankly, “Yeah. Michael felt my boobs when I was in fourth year.” 

“Fourth year?” Harry said. Ginny gave him an annoyed look. “I didn’t feel your boobs until after the war,” he pointed out to her. “And your’s are still the only ones I’ve ever felt.” 

Ginny snorted, “You’re free to go feel boobs again, Harry. We’re divorced.” 

In that moment, Harry had a vision of Neville standing shirtless in front of him, and his own hands working their way through Neville’s chest hair over his wide pectoral muscles. Then, in this vision he leaned and Neville leaned in toward each other for a kiss. He must have gone silent for too long, because Ginny let out a loud guffaw.

“Blimey, Harry. Is there someone who’s boobs you want to feel?” She asked.

“What?” Ginny’s laughter brought his mind back to the present, “No. Don’t be ridiculous.” 

“Because if there is, go for it.” 

“There’s not,” Harry said shortly. 

“Oh, OK,” Ginny said sarcastically. 

Harry chose to ignore her sarcasm because frankly she was hitting a little too close to home. He turned the subject back to their son. “What should we do about Jamie?” 

Ginny rolled her eyes. “Nothing. You had the sex talk with him years ago. I’m sure he’s fine.”

“I just can’t believe you’re OK with this.” 

“What’d you think was going to happen, Harry? Our kids were going to become teenagers and not think about girls and kissing?” 

“He broke the rules.” 

Ginny laughed, “Well, he wouldn’t be Jamie Potter if he didn’t.”

“Should I say something to him?”

“Like what?” Ginny asked. “Harry, we can’t tell him not to get a girlfriend. We can’t tell him not to kiss girls. We can punish him for being out of his common room after hours, but it sounds like Neville’s taken care of that already. If you’re so concerned, talk to him today, but I swear on Merlin’s pants, do not be angry at him for kissing a girl.” 

“Ugh,” Harry said. “Why’s parenting so hard?” 

Ginny smiled, “Hey, you’re the one who wanted to be there this year.” When Harry didn’t answer, she changed the subject, “Tell me about his Quidditch match yesterday.” 

_______

After lunch, Harry sent Jamie a note to come see him at his flat. Jamie knocked before entering, looking both guilty and defensive at the same time.  Harry was busy at the kettle, “Sit down,” he said. “I’m making some tea.” 

Jamie silently sat in one of the chairs next to the fireplace. He said nothing, so Harry opened up the conversation. “That was some game yesterday, eh?” 

“Yeah,” Jamie said sullenly. 

Harry brought the cup of tea over and handed it to Jamie and sat down with his own. Jamie fidgeted for a moment before putting the cup down on the table and said, “I suppose you didn’t call me in here to talk about quidditch.” 

“No, I didn’t.” 

“Well, I’m sorry I was out of the common room after hours.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“I know. I hear you got detention.” 

Jamie scowled, “And Professor Longbottom took twenty points from Gryffindor!” 

Harry took a sip of his tea, “Wasn’t it forty? Twenty for you and twenty for Emilie?” 

Jamie didn’t say anything, and he refused to look in his father’s eyes. Harry sighed. “Jamie, it’s fine that you have a girlfriend.” 

“I really like her,” Jamie said, still sounding defensive. 

“I like her too,” Harry said. “She’s an excellent student.” 

“So what’s the problem?” Jamie asked, snidely. 

“Look, we both know you were caught having a snog with her.” 

“That’s none of your business!” Jamie said hotly, “They didn’t call Emilie’s parents!” 

Harry shouldn’t have been surprised that he and Ginny managed to produce such a hot tempered child, but every single time one of his kids rushed to anger, it still managed to knock him sideways. Harry had to take a deep breath and remind himself not to snap at Jamie. That wouldn’t get anything accomplished. He had to channel his inner-Neville. 

“Professor Longbottom only told me because I’m here, and he didn’t want me hearing it from someone like Peeves and not know what was going on.” 

“So, what. Do I have more detentions with you?” Jamie’s voice was dripping with attitude. 

“No. I was pretty angry last night, but I’ve gotten over it.” 

“So why’d you call me here?” Jamie demanded. 

“I just want to talk.” Harry said. He took another sip of tea to steady his nerves. “I know I gave you the sex and puberty talk a few years ago, but I just want to reiterate-” 

He was cut off by Jamie wailing, “No! Daaaa-aaad! I don’t want another sex talk. I already know about sex.” 

“I know you know the facts,” Harry said. His palms were sweaty and he wiped them surreptitiously on his pants. Jamie saw him do it and openly smirked at his father. Harry chose to ignore it. “I just wanted to remind you about….being ready, and consent.” 

“I’m  _ not _ ready,” Jamie said. “Emilie and I aren’t having sex.” 

“Not yet.” 

“I’m still just fourteen,” Jamie said. 

“You’re growing up,” Harry said. “And I just want you to be prepared.” 

“Dad,” Jamie whined, and in that moment he sounded so much like a five year old, that Harry was stunned he was old enough to have even kissed a girl. 

“Just listen,” Harry said. He didn’t know where he was going with this, but rolled ahead anyway. “One of these days, you are going to feel ready to have sex, and I want you to know it’s OK to want to. But you need to be emotionally ready. Because it can change a relationship, and makes it, you know, more important.” 

“Uh-huh,” Jamie muttered, scuffling his feet, his arms still clamped across his chest. 

Harry sighed. He was trying to be a good dad, but Jamie was having none of it. 

Still, he pressed forward, “The most important thing is consent.” 

“I’m not going to force her!” Jamie sounded affronted. “I would never!” 

“I know!” Harry said. Blimey, this had gone pear-shaped. “I just want to reiterate the importance of, respecting the girl and respecting yourself.”

“Uh-huh,” Jamie said again. 

“Jamie, can you just….” Harry didn’t know what to say. “Take what I’m saying seriously?” 

“I am dad,” Jamie said. “But you aren’t telling me anything I don’t know.” He started ticking off points on his fingers, “Wait until I’m ready to have sex, don’t force anyone to have sex, no means no, sex is something to take seriously.” Jamie looked up at his dad, “Anything else?” 

“Do you know about birth control?” 

“Condoms,” Jamie said. “Always use them. Madame Pomfrey gives them away for free if you ask.” 

Harry choked on his tea, “She  _ does? _ ” She hadn’t done that twenty years ago. 

Jamie laughed, “‘Course she does.” 

“Oh, well OK. You can come to me too, you know, if you can’t go to Madame Pomfrey.” Harry said. 

Jamie rolled his eyes. “You’re divorced, dad. What do you need condoms for?” 

Harry stared at his son, wondering if he really was that thick. He didn’t even need to say anything before Jamie’s face went red and he said, “Oh.” Then his face looked shocked, “Who?” He demanded. 

“No one,” Harry said, taking his turn to roll his eyes. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I am an adult, and condoms are generally the type of thing adults have on them.” 

“Oh,” Jamie said, sounding relieved that he didn’t have to think about his father having sex. “Are we done here?” 

Harry sighed. This conversation definitely did not go the way he’d wanted it to. “I just want you to know you can come to me with any questions or if you need anything.” 

“I know it, Dad,” Jamie said. Then he softened his attitude a bit. “I’ve always known that.”

Harry smiled and nodded his head perfunctorily. “Alright then. I’ll let you go.” He couldn’t help but smile when Jamie gave him a quick hug before heading out.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winter Holiday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Thanks for your patience! I'm happy to report that I won Nano this year - yay! Enjoy this next chapter. Since there was a gap in posting, i went ahead and made this a nice long chapter.

The remainder of the semester flew by. Harry kept busy teaching his classes, running the chess club, which had taken on a few more members, and hanging out with Neville. He managed to shove any uncomfortable feelings he had about Neville to the back of his mind, and concentrate on his duties as a professor. 

Jamie turned fifteen in November, and Harry took him out to dinner in Hogsmeade to celebrate. As much as Jamie wanted the invisibility cloak for his birthday, Harry had to laugh and say no. He did get him a new broom, though - A Nimbus 3X. 

Before he knew it, he and the other teachers were seeing the students off the Hogwarts Express for the Winter Holidays. Harry gave each of his kids a hug, and told them he’d see them in a few days at The Burrow. 

After the separation, Harry and Ginny had bought a flat in London. They shared custody of the kids, who stayed at Grimmauld Place, and whoever didn’t have the kids at that moment, would stay at the flat. Since Harry saw the kids at Hogwarts nearly every day, he’d given Ginny all of winter break, though he was going for Christmas and Boxing Day dinners at The Burrow. 

Still, when he floo’ed out of Hogwarts, it was Grimmauld Place he went to so that he could say hi to Ginny before heading to the flat. 

“Hi Ginny,” he said, stepping out of the fireplace, removing his traveling cloak and setting down his bag. Ginny was sitting at the kitchen table, books about the history of Quidditch opened in front of her, and an article which appeared to be only half-written, scrolled in the typewriter. 

“Hi!” Ginny said, smiling to see Harry standing there. “Blimey, Harry. What has being a professor done to you?” 

“How do you mean?” 

“You’re wearing a cozy jumper, your hair’s grown out, and you’ve gotten…” she drifted off, patting her stomach. 

Harry looked down, and saw a slight paunch sticking out the top of his pants. “Teaching isn’t quite as physical as Auror-ing,” he laughed and shrugged. “I guess I should stop eating the treacle tarts at Hogwarts and try to get more exercise.” 

“You look healthy.” 

“Wasn’t I healthy before?” 

“You were a bit underweight, and the stress of being an Auror made your face a bit peaky and pale. You look great.” 

“Oh,” Harry was surprised. He hadn’t realized he looked skinny and peaky and pale before. “Thanks?” 

“Tell me about your semester,” Ginny said, putting the tea kettle on as Harry sat at the kitchen table. 

Harry told her a little bit about his classes, about how he changed the curriculum, and was going to go into the Auror’s Office in the days after Christmas, before returning to Hogwarts to make the new curriculum official, so that any Auror after him who took the post would have to follow it. 

“How’s Jamie’s girlfriend?” Ginny asked. 

Harry huffed. “Fine. I quite like her, actually, as a student.” 

“They get caught making out any more?” 

“No. Either they’ve stopped sneaking out or have gotten better at it. I don’t really want to know.” 

“No, neither do I,” Ginny said. 

“I did tell him he could come to me for condoms,” Harry said. Sometimes he wasn’t sure he was making the right decisions when parenting his kids, and needed to bounce these things off Ginny, who Harry thought was a much more natural and much less worried parent. 

Ginny nodded. “That was probably awkward, but also the right thing. He could always go to Madame Pomfrey.” 

“Was that a thing when we were at Hogwarts? Madame Pomfrey handing out johnnies?” 

Ginny laughed, “Yes. When you were off hunting horcruxes and a good quarter of the students were hiding out in the room of requirement, she knew what was up and made sure the room was stocked up.” 

“Merlin,” Harry said. “I was risking my life and you guys were fucking?” 

“Not all of us,” Ginny grinned. “But there were long days in there when we needed to hide.”

Harry had to laugh. “What time are you picking up the kids?”

“Train doesn’t come in until about seven.” Ginny looked at her watch. “I was thinking about our conversation in the fire a couple months ago.” 

“What about it?”

“You got this look on your face, and I’m wondering if there’s a woman you’re interested in?” 

Harry snickered, “I’m at Hogwarts. What, do you think I fancy Minerva McGonagall? Maybe Sybill Trelawny?” 

Ginny had to laugh, “I suppose not. I was just wondering.”

“There’s not,” Harry said shortly.

“OK, well….” Ginny drifted off. “You interested in coming up to bed with me?” 

Harry nearly choked on his tea. The night that his and Ginny’s divorce was finalized, Harry had gone to the Leaky to have a drink, and he saw Ginny there. “The kids are at The Burrow for the night,” she’d said to him. And they’d gotten a room above the Leaky and had sex. That was the last time they’d done it, and by now it’d been a year and half. During that year and a half, Harry hadn’t even kissed anyone, much less gotten laid. 

“You don’t have to,” Ginny answered. “I’ve just not gotten any since that night at the Leaky.” 

“Neither have I,” Harry admitted, standing up, ready to do this. 

Ginny grinned, grabbed him by the hand and led him up the stairs. 

It may have been a year and a half, but he and Ginny had been married for fifteen years, so it was familiar. Their bodies were used to each other, and Harry knew exactly what Ginny liked, how she liked her neck kissed and her inner thighs massaged. And she knew exactly what to do for him, to grab his ass hard as he entered her. 

Afterward, he spooned himself around Ginny and kissed her bare shoulder. 

Ginny rolled onto her back and smiled up at Harry. “That was good.” 

“Mm-hmm,” he agreed, placing a peck on her lips. 

“We shouldn’t do it too often though,” she said. 

“Right,” he agreed. “Just until we can both find someone else to shag.” 

They cuddled in bed together, chatting amiably. Harry felt relief, not just for having had his first shag in eighteen months, but also because he and Ginny did make good friends. Much better friends than they had spouses, at the very least, and he felt like he could talk to her and even occasionally sleep with her, without being in love with her. It was a relief that she was on the same page.

________

On Christmas Day, Harry headed over to the Burrow, carrying gifts for his former in-laws, as well as Hermione. 

“Harry!” Molly called happily, enveloping him in a hug. 

“Hi, Molly,” Harry said, kissing her cheek and handing her the gift he’d brought. 

“Oh, Dear. You didn’t have to,” she said, patting Harry’s cheek. “Oh, you could use a shave,” she laughed at the stubble on his face. 

Harry followed the noise into the living room where he was engulfed by children, not just his own, but all of his nieces and nephews, wishing him a Happy Christmas. 

He made his way through the well wishers, stopping to give his own kids kisses and gifts, before finally making his way to the corner of the room, where Ron and Hermione were sitting on a loveseat. 

It was already crowded, but they scooted as far as they could so Harry could sit in between them. Hermione gave him a big hug. “We’ve missed seeing you ‘round the ministry!” she told him. 

“How’s Hogwarts?” Ron asked, patting him on the shoulder. 

“Fine,” Harry said, and he told them a little bit about it. “I see your kids in class, and Hugo’s in the chess club.”

Ron grinned, “I can’t believe Al convinced  _ you _ of all people to run the chess club.” He cracked his knuckles. “You up for a game?” 

“God, no.” Harry answered. “Hugo beat me in about five minutes in the last club meeting. I don’t need this game to give me another hit on my self-esteem.”

They laughed, and Harry listened to Hermione prattle on about the things he’s been missing out on at the ministry. While Harry listened, he found his mind wandering, and shocked that he didn’t miss the Ministry at all. His tiny cozy Hogwarts flat, his students begging for extra credit, keeping snogging teenagers out of the Shrieking Shack, and the being in charge of the magical education of Britain’s wizards was something he’d fallen in love with. 

He decided then and there that he was going to ask for a second year as the Auror in charge of Defense Against the Dark Arts. 

After dinner, the kids were outside, having a snowball fight, while the adults sat around the living room, drinking fire whiskey. 

“You’re working with Neville, right?” Charlie asked Harry. 

Harry grinned, remembering that Charlie and Neville had slept together last summer, “Yeah,” he said, knowing what was coming. 

Charlie nodded, a smirk on his face, “Nice.” 

It took Ron a beat to realize what that meant. “What?! Charlie, did you sleep with Neville Longbottom?” 

Charlie laughed, while Hermione and Ginny screeched “No way!” 

“I already knew that,” Harry said, tilting his drink towards Charlie. “Good work.” 

“That guy is…” Charlie drifted off. “Fuck me, he’s hot.” 

Harry choked on his whiskey. He wasn’t sure anyone else had seen it in Neville. But he guessed Charlie did. Ron on the other hand wrinkled his nose, “Neville? He’s a bit stodgy, isn’t he?” 

“No, he’s not,” Harry said quickly before Charlie could answer. Everyone in the room gave him an odd look. “What? I work with him. He’s not stodgy.” 

“Too right he’s not,” Charlie said, with a wink. 

“Not like  _ that _ , _ ”  _ Harry said quickly. “I just mean he comes across as real sensible and solid and maybe a bit boring. But he’s not.” 

“Sure, mate,” Ron said amiably, obviously not concerned with Neville’s stodginess at all. “What’d you do with him, Charlie?” 

“Without going into details,” Charlie said, because even though he wasn’t shy about being a bloke who slept around, he actually didn’t go into detail to protect the honor of his partners, “Let’s just say, he’s definitely not stodgy.” 

Harry remembered that Neville had said Charlie was a demon in the sack, and suddenly he was very uncomfortable. “Could we not?” He felt his face reddening, and he knew it was because he was imagining Neville and Charlie in bed and he didn’t entirely hate it. 

“What?” Charlie asked, smirking at Harry.

“I work with the guy, all right? I don’t want details of his sex life.” 

“I thought he already told you about us,” Charlie said. 

“He did. But I don’t need….” Harry waved his hands vaguely, “All this. He didn’t give me any details, except that he asked me not to tell Ron.” 

Ron snorted, “He doesn’t know Charlie then.” 

“All right,” Charlie agreed. “I’ll drop it. But hey, a few weeks after Neville left Romania to go back to Britain, I met this brother and sister. Twins. Guess which one I slept with?” 

________

 

Later that evening, Harry was coming out of the loo and ran into Charlie. “‘Scuse me,” he said as he went to side step out of Charlie’s way. 

“Hey, wait,” Charlie said, and Harry stopped before heading down the stairs, pivoted on his foot and turned back. 

“Yeah?” He asked. 

“I’m sorry if that Neville talk made you uncomfortable.” 

“ S’Alright,” Harry answered. “It’s just, you know, he’s my colleague and I want to be professional and all that.” 

“Of course,” Charlie said, and Harry was sure he could detect a note of Charlie humouring him in his tone of voice. 

“It’s true,” Harry insisted. 

“Uh-huh,” Charlie said, completely unimpressed. “Listen, my bisexual advice to you is-” 

Harry interrupted, “I’m not bi.” 

“Harry,” Charlie said. “Come on.” 

“What?” 

Charlie cocked his head and looked at Harry. “Do you not know this about yourself?” 

“I’d know if I wasn’t straight, Charlie.” 

“Oh my God, how drunk were you, a few years ago at Christmas?”

“What are you talking about?” 

“You really don’t remember talking to me? About, let’s see three or four years ago? It was Christmas, and Lily had fallen asleep in your lap, and you were sitting there on the couch, everyone else was wandering around the house, but you stayed right there on the couch, afraid to wake Lily up?” 

And with a rush, the memory did come back to Harry. He had been quite drunk. “You sat down next to me,” he said quietly. “But I don’t know what we talked about.”

“You asked me how I knew I was into blokes.”

“What’d you answer?” Harry asked, almost afraid to know the answer. 

“Same way you know you aren’t.” 

“And I laughed and told you that you’d be surprised,” Harry supplied, the memory coming back to him clearer than ever. “Fuck,” he said, banging his head against the wall. “I’m really fucking stupid.” 

“I’m guessing you never told Ginny.” 

“I never even told  _ myself, _ ” Harry groaned. “Not until this exact moment.” 

“So the whole thing with Neville? It’s not just because he’s a colleague?” 

Harry sighed. “No. Well, yes. That’s the reason I haven’t done anything about it, but I still-” He cut himself off, unable to make himself say it. 

“You fancy him?” 

Harry frowned, but nodded. “Don’t tell anyone.” 

“I won’t,” Charlie said. 

“I’ve never fancied a guy before.” 

“What are you gonna do about it?” Charlie asked. 

“Nothing,” Harry said. “We work together. It wouldn’t be proper to shag someone I work with.” 

“I’ve fucked half the dragon reserve,” Charlie pointed out. 

“Hogwarts isn’t a dragon reserve shut away and isolated in the wilds of Romania, Charlie. You know, we have to be professional. We answer to the Board and to the Ministry.” 

“Well, forget Neville,” Charlie said. “Go get laid, man.”

“Are you giving me sex advice?” Harry laughed. 

“If you weren’t my sister’s ex-husband, I’d be doing much more than just giving advice,” Charlie admitted. “You married my sister when you were, what, twenty-three? That’s way too young. How many other people did you even fuck?”

“None,” Harry said. 

“No one?” Charlie asked, and let out a low whistle. “It’s not my business, but it’s been a year and a half and you haven’t-”

Harry cut him off, “Ginny and I did. Just the other day.” 

“Oh, that’s real healthy for a divorce,” Charlie said sarcastically. “I swear your healthy friendly divorce is like nothing I’ve seen in my life. Where’s the hatred and the fighting?” 

“We got through all that while we were still married,” Harry pointed out. 

“Fair enough,” Charlie said. “Listen, I’m going to a muggle club tomorrow night. Come with me.” 

“You want me to find a muggle?” 

“Just for a shag. Maybe not even that, just for a bathroom handjob, even.” 

Harry guffawed, “Blimey.” 

“You coming?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows. 

Harry thought about it. Tomorrow was Boxing Day. He was having dinner at the Burrow, but since Ginny had the kids, he didn’t have evening plans. 

“You’re coming,” Charlie goaded. 

______

After Boxing Day dinner, Harry slipped out of the Burrow, with the excuse that he needed to do some work, but really he was waiting for Charlie. He was nervous, pacing the floor of the small flat, flicking his wand against the palm of his hand so that it shot out silvery sparks. Truth was, he did have work he could be doing now; He had curriculum plans to hand over to the Ministry after all, but he couldn’t. He was too wired, too convinced that going to a gay muggle club was a terrible idea. 

As much as a terrible idea it seemed to be, he was too curious to say no. 

Eventually, there was a knock on the door (Harry and Ginny specifically chose a flat not connected to the floo, but not too far from a hidden public floo), and Harry let Charlie in. 

Harry did a double take. Charlie, who normally wore baggy denim trousers and tee shirts and never combed his hair looked amazing. Dark trousers which were tight in the arse, paired with a blue collared shirt, sleeves rolled up to reveal his muscular and scarred forearms. His hair was combed and gelled just a little bit to keep it off his forehead. Harry was stunned. Charlie looked  _ hot. _

“You’re not wearing that, are you?” Charlie asked Harry, by way of greeting. Harry looked down at his worn denims, trainers and oversized plaid shirt. 

“Er…” he said. 

“Please tell me you have other clothes here.” 

“Not many,” Harry admitted. He turned and went to the bedroom, and led Charlie to his side of the closet he shared with Ginny. 

“Can I repeat what I said last night?” Charlie asked, his eyes skimming over Ginny’s clothes. “You and Ginny share a flat, your clothes are hanging next to each other. You have the weirdest divorce ever.” 

“I know,” Harry sighed. “These are my clothes,” he pointed to one side of the closet. 

Charlie frowned, flicking through the few things still hanging. “Here,” he said, throwing a pair of trousers toward Harry. 

“These are too small,” Harry said, handing them back. 

“Bollocks,” Charlie said. “Put them on and I’ll spell them to fit.” 

Harry pulled off his denims and pulled these trousers up his legs. They were tight around the thigh and he couldn’t quite button them. He had gained a little weight since starting his teaching career. Charlie pointed his wand at Harry’s legs, and Harry instinctively covered his balls with his hand. Charlie laughed, “Don’t worry. I do this all the time.”

Harry uncovered himself and closed his eyes as Charlie muttered an incantation. He felt the fabric around his thighs loosening and the waistband expanding. Harry buttoned the trousers and moved around a bit. “They’re tight in the arse.” 

“No they aren’t,” Charlie said appreciatively. 

Harry rolled his eyes, but looked at himself in the mirror. Surprisingly, his arse did look nice in these pants that only just fit him. He was used to wearing much baggier clothes. Charlie did a little more magic on one of Harry’s collared shirts. 

As they were leaving, Harry stuck his wand in the elastic hoop that was inside all his boxer shorts. “No,” Charlie said. “No wand.” He took his own wand out and threw it carelessly onto Harry’s kitchen table. 

Harry snorted, “I don’t think so. The very first thing I teach all my classes is to never leave without your wand.” 

“You think Voldemort is showing up to the Eagle Club?”

“Not Voldemort necessarily,” Harry muttered. “But I’m still not leaving without my wand.” 

“If you hook up with a muggle, how’re you going to explain to him a piece of wood stuck in your pants?” Charlie asked. 

Harry had to admit, he had no answer for that. Still, he hesitated. 

“C’mon,” Charlie chided. 

Harry sighed and dropped his wand next to Charlie’s on the kitchen table. Then he opened the kitchen drawer and pulled out a wad of muggle money. Charlie widened his eyes, “I don’t think you’ll need quite that much, Harry.” 

Harry shrugged and put the money in his wallet. Muggle money never felt real to him, not like Galleons, Sickles, and Knuts did. He never paid attention to what muggle money he spent, and he knew that made him a rich asshole, but that’s how it was. His parents had left him a lot, and it wasn’t about to run out. 

Harry didn’t feel good about this, going out wandless to a muggle club to have what might be his first experience with a man. Even with all his trepidation, his curiosity won out and he knew he was going to go, and he was probably going to try to snog a guy. 

Harry followed Charlie onto the tube, where they chatted quietly, and where Charlie whispered to Harry that a fellow down the train was staring at him. Harry casually turned his head and met a young Indian man’s eyes. They shared a small smile before Harry turned back to Charlie.

Harry gallantly paid for Charlie’s entrance fee to the club. The inside was on the dark side, the lights were flashing and were mostly pinks and blues. The dance floor in the middle was already crowded, as was the bar. Harry got him and Charlie drinks, almost ordering firewhiskey before remembering this was a muggle club and changed it to plain whiskey shots. 

Harry needed the liquid courage for when the man from the tube approached him and asked him to dance. Charlie grinned and nodded his head, indicating Harry should definitely go dance with this guy. 

Harry wasn’t a good dancer, but he’d had enough to drink, and he wasn’t any worse than the guy he was dancing with. The music was too loud for real conversation, but they managed to get each other’s names at least, “Rahul,” the man had shouted into his ear, holding his hand out. Harry shook it and shouted back, “Harry.” 

They danced for a while, Harry managing to move his hips to the rhythm of the music, Rahul holding onto his waist. After several songs, they headed to the bar for another drink. Rahul was drinking something called a sidecar, which looked good, so Harry ordered one too. It was a little quieter by the bar, and they snagged a spot at a standing table and were actually able to talk more. 

“I saw you on the tube,” Harry said to Rahul. “Did you follow us here?” 

Rahul laughed, “No. I got lucky and was headed here anyway.” 

“I’ve never been here before,” Harry admitted.

“Oh yeah? Did you come with your boyfriend?” Rahul asked, waving his hand toward the table where Charlie was seated, chatting up a handsome bloke. 

“He’s not my boyfriend. He’s my...uh…” Harry paused for a moment, and decided honesty was the best policy. “He’s my ex-wife’s brother.” 

Rahul raised an eyebrow, “Ex-wife? Did you leave her because you’re gay?” 

“I’m bi,” Harry said. The words felt odd coming out of this mouth. He knew they were right, but he’d spent his entire life identifying some other way, and one conversation with Charlie Weasley was setting him on a different course.

“Have you ever been with another bloke?” 

“No,” Harry admitted. “That’s why Charlie brought me out.” 

“You’re looking to get laid?” 

“Well, not exactly laid. But….something.” 

“Something,” Rahul looked amused. “If you’re interested, we could something.” 

“I am interested,” Harry said, feeling bold. Rahul was friendly and frankly, he was gorgeous. Guys were almost always a lot taller than Harry, but Rahul was almost exactly the same height, which made Harry feel more secure for whatever stupid reason that Ginny would have called toxic masculinity.   

“C’mon,” Rahul said, motioning for Harry to follow him. Rahul knew his way around the club. They walked past the bar, around the far end of the dance floor, past a line to the men’s bathroom, and toward an unattended coat check counter. Just past the coat check counter was a door with no sign. “This is a single bathroom,” Rahul explained. “It’s supposed to be for the coat attendant, but they stopped employing a coat checker. People just hang their own now.” 

“How do you know about this?” Harry asked.

Rahul grinned, “I used to be the coat check guy.” 

Harry laughed as he followed Rahul into the bathroom. Rahul flicked on the light and locked the door behind him. It was a big bathroom. No stalls, just a large room with a urinal, a toilet, and a sink. There was also a shelving unit with spare rolls of toilet paper, paper towels, and cleaning supplies. 

“So,” Rahul said, turning to Harry. 

“So,” Harry said. He wanted to wipe his hands on his pants, but he thought that would make him look a bit pathetic. 

He stood still while Rahul stepped toward him, and as he got close, Harry took the initiative to lean in for a kiss. 

And yeah, it was good. Harry didn’t know why he’d never allowed himself to think to hard about blokes, but this? This was something he could get used to. He liked the feeling of Rahul’s beard scratching against his chin, and as their kiss deepened, he could feel it under his nose as well. 

Harry snaked his arm around Rahul’s waist and pulled him close, deepening the kiss. 

When Charlie had mentioned bathroom handjobs, Harry thought he was joking. But this is exactly what this turned into. Leaning onto the metal shelving unit, Rahul unbuttoned and unzipped Harry’s trousers and got them, along with his boxer shorts down around his knees and jerked him off. Rahul leaned in and kissed Harry on the neck as he worked Harry over with his hands until Harry grasped the pole of the shelf with one hand and came with a gasp and a few thrusts into Rahul’s hand. 

That they were in the bathroom made it convenient for cleanup, and by the time Rahul had washed his hands, Harry had gotten his wits about him and was able to return the favor. He’d never touched another penis besides his own, but found that it was easy, and nice to give pleasure like this. 

If Harry had any doubts about his bisexuality going into the club tonight, he didn’t anymore. 

____________

Harry spent parts of the next week chasing down the Head of Magical Education at the Ministry to give him his plans for a Defense Against the Dark Arts Curriculum. He finally did that, then went back to his London flat to relax. It was his winter holiday, and he didn’t feel like he’d gotten any time to relax. 

Harry missed seeing Ron so often, so he came over one afternoon and they lazed around the flat, drinking, eating Thai takeaway, talking, and playing a few games of wizard chess. Naturally Harry lost every round. 

Despite it being the number one thing on his mind, Harry decided not to tell Ron about his little excursion with Charlie. He didn’t tell him about his newly discovered bisexuality, and he sure didn’t tell him about the feelings he’d been having about Neville Longbottom. Not that he thought Ron would have been anything other than supportive, but it was something Harry wanted to hold close to his chest for now. 

“Mum and Dad are taking all the kids on New Years Eve,” Ron said to Harry. “A bunch of us are headed out to Diagon Alley. Meeting at the Leaky at eight. You in?”

“Absolutely,” Harry answered. “Who all is going to be there?”

“Dunno everyone,” Ron answered. “Me and Hermione, of course. Ginny’s coming, I hope that’s OK.” 

“It’s fine,” Harry said, thinking back on the last time he and Ginny had been at the Leaky together. He wasn’t planning on sleeping with her again. 

“Bill and Fleur are dropping their kids with mum and dad, but I don’t know that they’re coming to the Leaky with us. Luna and Rolf will be there. Lavender and Dean, Seamus and his wife, whose name I always forget,”

“Georgia,” Harry answered. 

“Georgia,” Ron went on. “I’m not sure who else.” 

“Sounds good,” Harry said. “A little Gryffindor reunion.” 

“You should let Neville know,” Ron said. 

“What? Why?” Harry asked, pushing down a panicky, guilty feeling. 

“Because he was in Gryffindor with us?” Ron said, looking at Harry curiously. “You’re the one insisting he’s not at all stodgy.” 

“He’s not,” Harry said, calming his heart. “Yeah, all right, I’ll invite him.” 

Later that night, Harry sat down to pen a quick note to Neville. 

_ Nev,  _

_ There’s an impromptu Gryffindor reunion at the Leaky on New Years Eve 8pm. I’ll save you a seat. _

_ Harry. _

Harry held the note out and reread it. He frowned a little. There was a lot more he wanted to include in the note. He wanted to tell Neville about his holiday break, and he wanted to ask about his. Instead, he simply folded the note, tied it to his owl’s foot and sent it the way it was. 

________

Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny left the Burrow together at eight in the evening on New Year’s Eve night. They kissed their kids, told them to behave and to listen to their grandparents. Molly and Arthur had tables of food, games and crackers set out for the kids, and ushered them out the door. Harry was sure that Molly and Arthur would let the grandkids stay up as late as they pleased, something they never would have allowed when their own children were young. 

They made their way to the Leaky, where they said a quick hello to Hannah Abbott, working hard at the bar. Hannah pointed them toward the semi-private back room, “I saved it for you all,” she said. 

Harry was relieved. Being out in public often meant there were paparazzi from the  _ Prophet _ or other shady news sources taking photos of him. It meant he had to tread carefully. But with a mostly private room, Harry would be more protected. He was sure to take a seat facing the wall, so any photos snapped by the news would only get the back of his head. He carefully selected a place to sit with one chair to his side. He was saving it for Neville, but didn’t want to make that fact too obvious. 

Ginny sat on the other side of him, while Ron and Hermione took the seats opposite. They were there less than a minute when Dean and Lavender walked in, followed quickly by Seamus and Georgia. 

“Happy New Year!” They greeted each other, giving hugs and handshakes all around. Seamus’ wife, Georgia was American and was introduced to the folks she hadn’t met yet, including Luna and Rolf who joined them just as everyone settled in again. 

Drinks were served and dinner was ordered. The conversation was jolly and loud, and Harry couldn’t stop flicking his eyes toward the doorway wondering when Neville would get there. 

At one point, Ginny turned and looked at the doorway, “What do you keep looking at?” she asked Harry. 

“Er, nothing,” Harry answered. He knew how weird it would sound to explain that he was anxious for Neville to get there. “I saw a  _ Prophet  _ guy out there, just trying to make sure we have our privacy."

Ginny frowned and also looked at the doorway. “Jackasses,” she said. When she and Harry had gotten divorced, they tried to keep it quiet, but the  _ Prophet _ had found out, and their relationship had turned into tabloid fodder. Harry and Ginny were able to laugh about it, but it did bother the kids. 

Just as their server was coming into their semi-private room to deliver their food, Neville walked in just behind him. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, scanning the table for an empty seat. 

Harry stupidly stood up, like he was being formal upon Neville entering. Ginny shot him a questioning look, but he simply said, “Neville, over here.” 

“Thanks,” Neville said, seating himself next to Harry. Harry took a moment to quickly look Neville over, who was placing his order with the server.  It’d been just over a week since he’d seen him, and Harry hated admitting to himself that he’d missed their daily conversations. 

“How’s your break been?” Harry asked once the food was served and Neville’d gotten his drink. 

Neville shrugged, “It’s all right. I’m late because Gran and I got into a row. I think she’s too old to be living alone and want her to move in with her sister.”

Harry snorted. He didn’t know August Longbottom well, but he knew her well enough to know that she wouldn’t like being told what to do by her Grandson. “Bet she didn’t like that.” 

Neville got a faraway look on his face for a brief moment, “Nope. Not at all.” He shook his head like he was trying to rid it of a bad memory. “Anyway,” he said. “How’ve you been?” He took a long sip of his ale. 

Harry told Neville about his break, leaving out key facts like sleeping with Ginny and snogging a stranger in a bathroom of a gay muggle club. They talked about their classes, their lesson plans for the next term, and made plans for dual classes for kids to learn about defensive magic using plants. “It’s more than just Devil’s Snare,” Neville said. 

Ginny leaned over Harry, “Nev, how are my kids doing in school?” 

Neville talked to Ginny for a little bit about the Potter kids, how Jamie is smarter than he acts, Albus is the smartest kid in his grade and how Lily has a quiet determination about her. In that moment, watching his ex-wife talking to his...well, colleague that he maybe had feelings for, Harry felt such a fondness for both of them. They were totally different people, Ginny always hot and geared up for a fight, and Neville so laid back but with a quiet tenacity about him. 

Maybe it was the booze, which Harry’d had plenty of by this point in the evening, but he was overcome with a feeling of fondness for the both of them.

At one point, Dean leaned over and handed the  _ Prophet  _ down to the end of the table where Harry and Neville were sitting. “Sorry about the news, Nev.” 

Neville looked down. The paper was open to the society page, which was the wizarding equivalent of a gossip tabloid. Sometimes their stories were correct, but sometimes not. The headline caught both Harry’s and Neville’s eyes. 

_ Norwegian Quidditch Star Marries Long-time Boyfriend  _

Underneath was a picture of Anders, Neville’s ex-boyfriend, looking very happy next to an extremely handsome wizard. They were both in tuxedos, holding hands and smiling widely. As the picture moved, Anders planted a quick kiss on the lips of his now-husband. 

Harry looked at Neville carefully. Neville simply shrugged and handed the paper back up the table. “We’ve been broken up for years. I don’t care that he went and married someone else.” 

The others at the table eyed him. “Are you sure?” Seamus asked. 

“Yeah I’m sure.” Neville said. “Look, we broke up a long time ago. I’m not holding a torch for him anymore. I loved him at the time, but I’d have hated to be married to him. I wish them all the luck in the world.” 

“That’s very mature,” Harry teased him. 

Neville snorted, “From the man who’s got the world’s friendliest divorce.”

As the night wore on, their group got louder and drunker. Ron tricked people with his and George’s latest trick gum, which caused the chewer to get a rapid stutter. Combining the gum with a lot of firewhiskey made for a lot of slurring stutters, and definitely a lot of laughter. 

As midnight neared, Harry, in his drunken state, thought that maybe he could get away with kissing Neville as the new year rolled in. Probably it was a bad idea, but he was struggling to think why that was the case. The two of them had been joined at the hip all night, talking mostly with each other. 

It was relief to Harry that as the countdown started, Hannah Abbott was on Neville’s other side, and as the new year was announced, Ginny pulled Harry toward him and planted a chaste kiss on his lips. Harry had his eyes opened, watching Neville and Hannah kiss each other on the cheek. Neville’s eyes were also open, watching Harry. 

After a while, their friends started trickling out. Neville left to get back to his Gran with a wave to Harry, “See you at Hogwarts.” 

Ginny and Harry had each taken a room above the bar for the night, and they headed up the stairs together. Though he was tired and heading for his own room, Ginny pulled him into hers and kissed him deeply once the door was shut behind them. 

Harry returned her kiss and they made their way over to the bed, stripping their shirts off along the way. 

“Wait, Harry,” Ginny said as Harry began working his hand up her skirt. 

He pulled back, “Yeah?” 

“I have a question for you?” 

“What?” 

“Do you fancy Neville?” 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short-ish chapter. I initially had one long one and decided to split it into two. Next chapter should be up next week. Thanks for reading!

He should have said yes. When Ginny asked him if he fancied Neville, Harry knew he should have been honest and said yes. Instead he laughed, and said ‘of course not,’ before they had sex again. 

But if he could go back in time, he’d have been honest with her. Because these feeling he had for Neville were something he wanted to talk about with  _ someone _ . His current go-to for talking things over was Neville. And of course, he couldn’t talk to Neville about his feelings for Neville.

As much as he loved Ron and Hermione, Harry wasn’t quite ready to let them in on this part of himself yet. Ron would be bemused and wonder why, if Harry liked both men and women he wouldn’t just choose to fancy a woman to make things easier on himself. (Something Harry was starting to wish was as easy as it sounded.) Hermione would probably just advise him to tell Neville, which was not something he was ready to do.

Divorced though they may be, Ginny was a great sounding board. She listened, she instinctively knew when a person was looking for advice and when they were just looking to vent. There was something about her plain honesty and judgment-free attitude that Harry knew he could trust. But he didn’t say anything when he had the chance, and now it was likely too late. 

The fleeting thought of apparating to Romania to visit Charlie some weekend seemed enticing to Harry, but he realized Charlie would just try to get Harry to hook up with some other dragon trainers as though he could fuck away his feelings for Neville. 

No, this was a problem Harry had to carry on his own. At this point, he was content to just keep doing what he was doing - being friendly with Neville and thinking longingly about him as he masturbated. 

Harry looked at the  _ Prophet _ in his hands and sighed. Right there, on the society page were two pictures. The first one was of him and Ginny kissing when the clock struck midnight on New Years’ Eve. The next was of him and Ginny heading up the Leaky stairs together. The headline read  _ Boy Who Lived Marriage Repaired?  _ The accompanying article was mostly full of bullshit.  _ Harry and Ginny Potter spotted together at New Years Party.... Harry and Ginny looked cosy….Harry and Ginny both stayed overnight at the Leaky Cauldron…..What could this mean for their marriage?.... The divorce always seemed a little too friendly. _

Harry threw the paper to the ground in disgust. He was sitting in his room at Hogwarts. The students would be back from their holiday this evening, and he had just tonight to settle in before classes started at eight the following morning. His kids would definitely see this on the train. This was the last thing he wanted. 

There was a soft knock on his door. “Come in,” Harry said. 

Neville peeked his head in, “Alright, Harry?” 

“Hey, Nev,” Harry said, standing up and quickly picking the paper up off the ground. “Come on in.”

Neville nodded to the  _ Prophet  _ Harry was now crumpling in his hands. “You saw it then.” 

“Lies,” Harry said, flopping down on his bed in anger. 

“I know that,” Neville said. 

“Other people don’t.” 

“Fuck ‘em,” Neville shrugged. He sat carefully on the bed next to Harry. 

Harry gave Neville a patronizing gaze, “My  _ kids _ don’t know it.” 

“Oh,” Neville nodded. “Well, make sure you tell them. The  _ Prophet  _ is rubbish.” 

“Yeah.” 

“I mean. You and Ginny? You’re over but still friends. How can that be so hard to understand?” 

Harry looked at Neville, hoping he’d understand and said hesitantly, “We did sleep together over the break.” 

Neville said nothing momentarily, and looked at Harry in shock, before quickly morphing his features into a more neutral look. “Oh. So the  _ Prophet _ isn’t entirely rubbish?” He asked with a measured nonchalance Harry couldn’t miss.

“Are you asking if Ginny and I are getting back together?”

“Are you?”

“No. Oh Merlin, no.” Harry shook his head. “That would be a terrible idea. We just had sex.” He paused, then added, “Twice.” 

“But just as friends.” 

“Yeah,” Harry nodded. Blimey, of all people, Neville should understand casual no-connections sex, right? After what he’d told Harry when they had dinner at the Hog’s Head? Then again, this wasn’t exactly no-connections. He and Ginny had been married for fourteen years. 

There were a few moments of silence, and it was painfully awkward for Harry. He couldn’t get a read on Neville, had no idea what he was thinking. Finally Harry couldn’t stand it and he said, “It’s not a big deal, right?”

Neville shrugged, “No. ‘Course it’s not.” 

“Because I wouldn’t want you to think-”

Neville interrupted, “I don’t think anything.” 

There was another moment of silence, Harry and Neville sitting side by side on Harry’s bed. Harry turned his whole body to face Neville. Neville inched closer to Harry. Their eyes met. 

If they were going to kiss, it would be a terrible idea. 

And yet, Harry didn’t pull away. He licked his lips. 

Neville scooted himself a tiny bit closer, and Harry’s mind was racing between  _ yes, yes, yes,  _ and  _ Oh my god, no.   _ He inched himself slightly closer to Neville. 

Neville put a hand on Harry’s leg and leaned in. 

Harry’s heart thudded in his chest as he leaned in to meet Neville halfway. 

Their faces were just inches apart. 

A loud knock came on the door. 

Harry and Neville backed away from each other, eyes wide as they stood up quickly. Harry opened the door to find all three of his kids standing there, holding the  _ Prophet _ and looking annoyed.

Harry sighed and held the door open, letting them in. “I gather you saw it.” 

“‘Scuse me,” Neville said, easing his way past Jamie, Albus and Lily, and out of the room. “I’ll catch you later, Harry.” 

“Sure,” Harry said, watching Neville’s quickly retreating form down the hall. 

“Whyyyyy, Dad?” Jamie complained. 

“Why what?” Harry pressed his fingers into his closed eyes then turned his attention back to his kids, half of his brain still screaming about another near missed kiss with Neville. Merlin’s balls, he needed to get himself together. 

“Why’d you kiss mum and make everyone think you’re getting back together?” Jamie demanded. 

“ _ Are  _ you getting back together?” Lily asked, and Harry cringed internally at the amount of hope in her voice.

“No,” he said. “We’re not.” 

“So what was the kiss about?” Albus asked. His face betrayed a level of distrust, as though he had proof of a kiss and couldn’t believe his own father would sit her and deny what was in front of his face.” 

“On New Year’s Eve, it’s a tradition to kiss someone at midnight,” Harry explained. “You count down from ten to one, and after one, you kiss. It wasn’t anything. Your mum and I were there together and we kissed.” 

“No one else was there?” Albus asked. 

“Do you wish I’d kissed Uncle Ron or Professor Longbottom instead?” His voice cracked on the word Longbottom. 

Lily and Jamie giggled, but Albus’s face remained serious. “What about the other picture?”

“We got separate rooms at the Leaky,” Harry promised them. “We walked up the stairs together, but I went into my room and she went into her’s.” Generally speaking, honesty was the best policy when it came to talking with kids. But there were times when honesty was not the answer, and Harry knew enough to know that this was one of those times. 

“Are you sure?” Albus asked.

“Al, I swear. All of you, please don’t read the pages of the  _ Prophet _ like they’re the honest truth, particularly the society page. The _ Prophet _ is in the business of selling stories and sometimes lies bring in more galleons than the truth.” 

His three kids looked slightly mollified. “You can all write to your mum and she’ll tell you the same thing.” Harry made a mental note to get a letter to Ginny before the kids could so she’d know what lies he told and she could back him up. “Now come on, let’s get to the Great Hall for dinner.” 

_____   
  


When Harry and Neville had almost kissed at the Shrieking Shack, things had gone back to normal between them almost immediately, and Harry nearly had started to believe that he imagined the almost kiss. 

But this? This was different. There was no denying that he and Neville came close to kissing again. If it hadn’t been for yet another interruption (Thank you, Jamie, Al, and Lily) who knows what would have happened? Kissing Neville would not be a good idea, and Harry needed to redouble his efforts to just chill the fuck out around Neville and not get caught up in any more confusing feelings about the other man. 

After this near-kiss, he and Neville had only a few half-hearted conversations, which were constantly in the back of Harry’s mind. While Harry was standing in front of his third years talking about vampire myths, or encouraging his fifth years in their patronuses, he was only half paying attention. The other half of his brain was devoted to Neville. 

Harry tried to dissect the awkwardness between himself and Neville, and whether he was reading too much into it or not. Where he and Neville would normally sit together at meals, Neville would suddenly invite Hagrid or Flitwick to join in their conversation. On Friday night, when Harry and Neville would normally spend a few hours in one of their flats with a bottle of bourbon, Neville had too many papers to mark to do it this Friday. 

Was Neville avoiding spending time alone with him? Or was all this a mere coincidence?

He couldn’t avoid Harry forever. He and Neville had plans to run a few classes together with their second years about defensive plants. Neville was going to teach the properties of the plants, and Harry was going to discuss how to use them defensively, as well as how the students should react if they find themselves up against someone using the plants against them. 

One Thursday evening about three weeks after the winter holiday ended, Harry marched down to the greenhouse at a time when he knew Neville had no classes. It was time, Harry decided, to end this fucking awkwardness between himself and Neville once and for all. 

Harry found Neville bent over a pallet of squirming bubotubers, poking at their pustules to see if they were ready to be squeezed. Harry intentionally did not stare at Neville’s ass, good though he knew it would look through his worn denim jeans. “Neville,” he said. 

Neville jumped and looked up and saw it was Harry standing there. “Oh, er...Hi Harry. You startled me.” 

“Right,” Harry decided to get down to business. “We need to talk about how we’re going to run our combined classes.” 

“Sure,” Neville said looking relieved that this was a business discussion, not a personal one. 

“OK, well, let’s do our normal Friday night then. My flat. I came back from winter holiday with a nice bottle of Fitzallen’s Finest Bourbon, and we can have it while we plan.” 

Neville looked a bit taken aback. “Oh, well, sure. I suppose It’s probably best we get to work on that.” 

Harry didn’t wait for Neville to suddenly think of a reason to back out of it. He bade Neville goodbye, turned on his heel and headed back to the castle. 

_____

That Friday, Harry lit a fire in the fireplace of his cold flat, and got out the good bourbon and glasses. He didn’t have much in the way of deskspace in his flat - his large desk was in his office, so he conjured a table between the two chairs so he and Neville could work. And so the table could provide a barrier between their bodies. That should discourage any more attempts at kissing. Harry needed to keep himself from getting tempted again. As much as he wanted to kiss Neville, he was sure it would be a bad idea to get involved with a co-worker. 

At exactly eight o’clock, there was a knock on the door. Harry opened it up and found Neville standing with a stack of books. “Hi,” he said, as Harry took some of the books from his hands.

“Blimey, Nev. Enough books?” Harry set them down on the table he’d conjured. 

Neville shrugged, “I just brought what I thought we might need.”  

“I’m not reading all of those,” Harry laughed as he and Neville took seats opposite each other at the table. “I’m not Hermione.” 

Neville laughed too. “It’s all right. I’ve already read them all.”

Harry poured them their drinks as Neville began talking. “So I made a list of the plants that I think would work best as actual defensive plants. Most herbology defense is used in potions making, but I think that people tend to forget the other ways we can use plants.” He pulled out a list, “Here’s what I have so far.” 

Harry couldn’t help grinning. To get Neville to forget any awkwardness of the last couple of weeks, all he had to do was talk about plants. Harry adored how earnestly Neville loved Herbology. 

“Yeah, this is good,” Harry looked over the list. “But these are second years, Nev. Aren’t some of these a little advanced for kids that age?” 

“It was just a few ideas. We can pare the list down.”

“Or we could also do this with some older classes. Maybe fifth years?” 

“We might be able to squeeze it in this term, but I don’t want to take away from the O.W.L work.” 

“Next year then,” Harry said. 

“I thought you only signed on to teach one year.” 

“I did, initially. Over the winter holiday I went to the Department for Magical Education and offered to take a second year here.”

“And the Aurors office were OK with that?” 

“Are you kidding? They were all thrilled they didn’t have to come teach.” 

“So it’ll be like this next year then? You and me, teaching together?” Neville’s voice was stretched thin, as though he was trying to sound enthusiastic, but with little success. 

“Er...yeah,” Harry answered. “I kind of like teaching, I think I took to it well and I wanted to get another year in.”  _ At least _ , he thought but didn’t say out loud.

“Oh.”

And all of a sudden, here was another conversation full of awkward pauses. “You okay, Nev?” Harry asked. 

“Sure. I’m glad you’ll be back next year.” Neville managed to sound less like he wanted to die at this point, but Harry could still hear how forced his happiness sounded. 

“Yeah, me too.” 

Neville gave a quavery sort of smile, took a shot of bourbon, then grabbed a book and said, “Let’s get down to planning this, then. Shall we?”


	7. Chapter 7

It was so strange how a relationship that had been nothing but friendly could turn to terse professionalism so quickly. 

Harry didn’t know what he’d done, besides almost kiss him, to make Neville so tense around him. But here they were, two weeks after they’d spent the evening planning their combined classes and things had gone right back to their strange awkward place. 

Harry would try to have a nice conversation with Neville, and sure enough Neville would find a reason to leave, or to invite a third person into their conversation. 

If Neville hadn’t nearly kissed him just a month earlier, Harry would have thought for sure Neville hated him. But he definitely hadn’t imagined that second near miss kiss. Neville’s hand was on his leg and he’d leaned in. Those weren’t the actions of a man who hated him.  

The kiss would have happened if Harry’s children hadn’t interrupted. And no matter how hard he tried to come to terms with his emotions, Harry couldn’t stop vacillating between wishing they’d kissed and being grateful for his kids’ interruption. 

Harry kept reminding himself that colleagues and friends who almost kiss  _ is  _ a pretty awkward situation, and he just needed to give themselves time to work through it. But he was getting impatient. Something had to give eventually.

______

The chess club was holding a tournament. Each house was holding its own playoff to determine their top two players, then those eight players would be playing in a school-wide tournament. 

Gryffindor, with only two players in the club, was easy. Those two were in the tournament, but they still had to play each other to determine who would be ranked first, and who would be second. 

Harry went to see Neville in one of the greenhouses. It would be harder for Neville to squeeze his way out of a conversation, or add a third party to it, from the greenhouse. 

“Hey,” Harry said, walking in and spying Neville elbow deep in a large pot full of earth, trying to push something down.

“Hi,” Neville said through clenched teeth. He glanced up at Harry and continued to struggle with whatever was in there. 

“Need some help?” Harry asked. 

“No. Just give me a minute.” Neville grunted (and why did that sound send a jolt of electricity through Harry’s body?) and pushed down into the dirt before holding his hands still, looking satisfied and removing his hands. He added more dirt to the top of the pot. “Saltero jumping seeds,” he explained. “Got to hold them down in the dirt for several minutes otherwise they jump out.” 

“I can help,” Harry offered again, rolling up his sleeve. 

“Thanks, but that was the last one,” Neville said. He held up his arms which were covered from fingertip to elbow in dirt. “Could use a cleaning charm though.” 

“Sure,” Harry grabbed his wand and headed over to Neville. Neville held his arms stretched out in front of him but stepped as far away from Harry as he could. Harry muttered the incantation and watched as the dirt lifted from Neville’s arms and made a neat pile on the closest table. His gaze lingered on Neville’s muscular forearm. 

“Anyway,” Neville stepped even further away and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “What do you want?” 

“The chess club,” Harry said, annoyed at Neville’s closed-off body language. “House tournaments are starting up, and the two Gryffindor players are playing each other tomorrow night. As head of house, I didn’t know if you’d want to be there.” 

“Yeah,” Neville looked relieved and let his arms relax. “Of course I do. When and where?” 

“After dinner tomorrow, seven o’clock. Southwest corner of the library.” 

“I’ll be there,” Neville said. 

Harry stood there for a moment.

“Anything else?” Neville asked brusquely. 

“What did I do?” Harry found himself asking, irritably. 

“What do you mean?” Neville asked. 

Harry shrugged. “You barely talk to me, you’re acting awkward around me. So what the hell did I  _ do _ to make you so mad?” 

“I’m not mad!” Neville said quickly.

“Then what is it?”

“You know what it is,” Neville said. “You know what almost happened the night we got back from winter holiday.” 

“It almost happened, but it didn’t.” 

“Yeah, well-”

Harry interrupted him, “Look if it makes you feel awkward or embarrassed or whatever, we can forget it. Act like it never happened.” 

“I didn’t mean for it to go like that,” Neville said. 

“Neither did I,” Harry said. In his mind, he was screaming  _ Yes I did! I wanted that kiss! _ He shook his head to clear it of those thoughts. “But I hate what’s happened since then. Can we please just go back to how it was before?” 

“Even though we both know I-” 

Harry cut him off again, “Yes.” He said it as forcefully as he could. “Fuck’s sake, Neville. I don’t care. I just want to do Friday nights again. I just want to be able to eat dinner without it being fuck-awkward and you forcing Slughorn into our conversations.”

“You noticed that, huh?” Neville asked. 

“Course I did,” Harry said. “But you don’t need to do it. I can ignore this,” he waved his hands between them, “whatever it is, to maintain a friendship. Can’t you?”

Neville went silent for a few moments before nodding his head curtly. “Yeah. I can do that.” 

“All right then,” Harry said.

“All right,” Neville agreed. 

They looked at each other silently, awkwardly, for a few moments before smiling and chuckling at the situation. “I’ll see you tomorrow night then? For the chess thing?”

“Yes,” Neville sighed, sounding relieved. “See you tomorrow.” 

Harry left the greenhouse feeling agitated. He didn’t know what he hoped for, but at the very least he’d hoped Neville would seem a  _ little _ more enthusiastic about the idea of continuing their friendship. 

The more he thought about it, and thinking about it was all he seemed to be doing recently, Harry could not figure out what Neville’s problem even was. They’d almost kissed twice, and that was on both of them, so it wasn’t anything for Neville to be embarrassed about. It’s not like he was a gay guy trying to kiss a straight guy who didn’t want it. Harry’d made it perfectly clear that he wasn’t going to pull away if Neville kissed him. 

Even though Neville had denied it,  _ was _ he actually angry at Harry? Was he mad that Harry’d maybe gotten his hopes up that a kiss would happen and then it didn’t? And if that was the case, why didn’t Neville just tell him that? 

This was unfair. His whole life, Harry had only been in one real relationship. He barely kissed Cho back when he was fifteen, then a few years later, kissed Ginny and eventually married her. Besides Ginny and that one night with Rahul at the club just the month prior, Harry didn’t have any relationship experience. He had nothing in his adult life to draw on regarding casual kissing, and making out with co-workers. Neville did though. Neville not only had relationships, he had plenty of casual hookups, and had even slept with a co-worker, back when Wesley Winebrand had been the DADA professor. 

So why was it  _ Harry _ who’d had to go to Neville to get their friendship sorted. Shouldn’t it have been the other way around?

Harry sighed as he opened the castle door. He supposed Neville’s agreement that they could ignore whatever  _ feelings _ were between them and go back to their friendship was the best he was going to get. 

______

It would have been nice to say that everything immediately went back to the way it was before the winter holiday. But it didn’t. 

Not that it was as completely fucking awkward as it had been a week ago, but there wasn’t that level of casual friendship yet. 

At the chess club tournament, Neville and Harry talked a bit. At dinner, they sat together and had a conversation just the two of them without any interruption from Slughorn. That Friday night they got together for drinks in Neville’s flat. 

It was so close to being like it had before. But Neville was putting a lot of physical space between the two of them. As though sitting too close, or leaning to close to Harry would somehow send him into a frenzy of lust and they’d start snogging in front of the whole school. 

When Gryffindor and Ravenclaw played each other at Quidditch, Harry sat with Neville as usual. But when Lily came up wanting to sit with her dad, Neville scooted over so that Lily was between them. 

None of these things went unnoticed by Harry. 

But, their conversations were mostly back to being normal. And they did have a lot of fun combining their second year classes, with lots of laughter and jokes with the students.

Eventually, Harry had to assume, they could go back to normal. 

In the meantime, Harry rarely stopped thinking about Neville. About how good it would have been to just kiss him. As Harry lay in bed at night, he’d think about how it would feel to have Neville there with him. How it would feel for Neville’s strong muscular arms to hold him close as they fall asleep together. 

________

A few weeks after their conversation in the greenhouse, it was a Friday evening, and Harry had Neville in his flat for their weekly drinks. They were talking and laughing about Jamie’s latest escapades in setting harmless booby traps outside the Slytherin common room. Neville laughed loudly when Harry admitted he hoped one of the Slytherin’s would figure out how to get Jamie back, and well. Maybe, just maybe, things were getting back to normal. 

A knock came on the door, and Harry answered it to find Minerva McGonagall there. 

“Potter, Longbottom,” she greeted them with a nod. “Potter, I need you in the Great Hall. A few Aurors are here. There’s been a situation in Hogsmeade, and the Aurors would like to talk to you.”

Harry followed McGonagall to the Great Hall, Neville on his heels. There were four Aurors waiting for him. Kingsley Shacklebolt, who was head of the Auror office, Wesley Winebrand, as well as Genevieve Goursotte and Tamar Abid, whom Harry had worked with a lot in the past. 

“What’s happened?” he asked. 

“There’ve been a couple of packages imbued with dark magic sent through the post to various people in Hogsmeade,” Kingsley said. “We aren’t sure if there are any connections to Hogwarts, but to be sure, we wanted to put you and Professor McGonagall on alert.” 

“Absolutely,” Harry answered. “What do you need me to do?” 

“Not much at the moment,” Kingsley said. “Owl post is going to go to the heads of houses, who will then deliver it to the students after checking for dark magic. We will put you in charge of making sure the heads of houses know how to do that.” 

“Got it,” Harry said, satisfied that he’d be able to help. 

“And Harry,” Kingsley turned to him and grabbed his shoulder seriously. “That’s all we need you to do for now. I understand you’re an auror and you probably want to get out into Hogsmeade and investigate this, but you have a job to do here at Hogwarts.” 

“Oh,” Harry said, befuddled because it actually hadn’t even occurred to him that he should want to leave his post as DADA professor. “Sure, Kingsley. No problem.” 

Kingsley looked at him as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. Harry had to admit, if you’d told him a year ago that he’d care more about lesson plans than investigating a dark magic mystery, he’d have thought you were crazy. Auror Potter had been all about jumping into the action. Professor Potter? Not so much. 

Harry and the Aurors continued to talk for a few more minutes about the case, the packages, and what leads they had. Harry got momentarily distracted by Wesley Winebrand staring at Neville. Harry’s stomach lurched at the thought of Wesley and Neville’s past. Not that he cared that Neville had a sexual past. Because of course an adult was going to have a sexual past, and he and Neville weren’t together, so it was no business of his. 

It had never bothered Harry that Neville and Wesley used to be in a relationship. Truthfully, it still didn’t. But seeing those two together, in the same room and making eye contact gave him a punched in the gut feeling. 

He dutifully ignored those feelings and continued to listen to Kingsley. As he listened, he stopped thinking about Neville and Wesley entirely, and another realization overtook him. 

He didn’t care about what Kingsley was saying. 

Of course he  _ cared _ that dark magic was making its way into Hogsmeade. He wanted the perpetrators to be caught. But he didn’t want to be the one doing the catching. All he wanted was to go back to his flat, finish off the brandy he and Neville had been drinking, go to sleep and wake up to mark more papers and watch the Hufflepuff and Slytherin quidditch match. 

It’d only been about six months since he took leave of the Auror’s office and already he felt so far removed from it. It was as though being an Auror was something he’d done in a past life. He rarely thought about his Auror work anymore. He was laser-focused on being a good professor. 

The strange thing was, back when he was working his ass off at being an Auror, he didn’t mind it. It was something he did out of a sense of duty, and he was good at it, and he liked ridding the wizarding world of dark magic. 

But it wasn’t until he started working at Hogwarts this year, that he realized he could have a job he loved and that he wanted to do for personal fulfillment, and not because of others’ expectations of him. 

Thank Merlin he’d agreed to a second year at Hogwarts. He wasn’t ready to think about going back to being a divorced guy living part time in a small flat and chasing dark wizards. 

The next morning, Harry had Neville and the other heads of house (Flitwick for Ravenclaw, Slughorn for Slytherin, and Babbling - the Runes Professor - for Hufflepuff) gathered early in the Great Hall so he could demonstrate how to check the mail for dark magic. It was just in time, because rather than large parliament of smaller owls flying through the Great Hall as usual, there were only four large owls, each bearing several letters and packages tied with twine, and dropped in front of the professors.

“You all right?” Neville asked Harry as he started sorting through the Gryffindors’ mail, hitting each piece with a revealing spell. 

“Yeah, why?” Harry asked. 

“You took off pretty fast after the Auror meeting last night.”

“I was just tired,” Harry answered. “I needed to get to sleep.” 

“It wasn’t because you wanted in on the case?”

“No. Oh, sweet Merlin no. I actually came to a sudden realization that I don’t miss Auror work at all. And now I’m wondering if I ever really did like it, or it was all about expectations.” 

“Like people expected Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, Defeater of Voldemort, to be an Auror and nothing else?”

“Yep,” Harry agreed. “And I went along with it, because what else was I going to do? I got into the Auror program early. It just made sense.” 

“And you never thought about another line of work?” 

“Never.” Harry said. “Well, after Jamie was born I briefly dreamed about reopening Fortescue’s Ice Cream parlor. But that seemed ridiculous.” 

“Why?”

“Why did I want to?”

“No, why did it seem ridiculous?” 

“My training was in being an Auror, not making ice cream.” 

“You know Florean Fortescue was a gifted potioneer?” Neville asked.

“What?” Harry laughed. “How do you know that?”

“He was friends with Gran. He’d gotten his Potions Mastery and worked as the highest level of the Ministry in Potion research and development. But he hated it and when he was in his forties, he quit and opened an ice cream parlor.” 

“Blimey, I had no idea.” 

“People want ice cream,” Neville said. “It’s not a ridiculous thing to want to be an ice cream maker.” 

“I dunno that I need to drop everything and be an ice cream maker, but…” Harry drifted off.

“But what?” 

Harry shrugged, “I’m finding that I like teaching a whole lot better than being an Auror.” 

“You don’t have to go back to being an Auror,” Neville said. 

“I dunno,” Harry said thoughtfully. 

“Did you like being an Auror? Honestly?”

Harry thought a moment. “You know, it’s not that I didn’t like it,” he said. “It’s that I did it out of a sense of obligation, and don’t get me wrong, I did get some satisfaction out of it. My first few years, we managed to bust several Deatheater resurgences, and it’d be impossible not to love doing that.” 

“I can see that,” Neville said, pointing his wand at a package and finding it clear of dark magic. “I can imagine that’d be very satisfying. But it wasn’t all busting up Dark Wizard rings, especially not in the last few years as that stuff has died off more and more. Did you still love it?”

“I thought I did,” Harry answered honestly. “Well, I never felt outright miserable anyway, so I didn’t think about it. I never thought in terms of liking my job until I started here."

“You know,” Neville said slowly, “The Aurors took over the Defense Against the Dark Arts position only because McGonagall was having trouble filling the slot permanently. It was supposed to be a temporary thing.”

“Are you suggesting I quit the Aurors to officially teach at Hogwarts?”

“Yes. It’s just a suggestion, and you can do what you want. But maybe it’s something to think about?”

The other professors had finished checking their owl post and had headed off to their house common rooms to hand out the mail, leaving Harry and Neville alone in the Great Hall. Harry glanced around, thinking hard. “Maybe,” he said. 

The truth was that he wanted to. He’d fallen easily into teaching, and he loved seeing his kids every day. But, if he was going to keep having this stupid crush on Neville, it’d be impossible to work with him long-term and not suffer some sort of heartache, having to see him every day and not being able to have him. 

“Well, you’ve got time,” Neville said, gathering up the mail. “The rest of this school year, next summer and next school year.” 

“‘Course,” Harry said. “Like you said, it’s just something to think about.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was feeling bad about how long it's been since I posted. So this chapter was written fairly quickly and only briefly proofread before posting. I take full responsibility for any errors.

Harry thought about his career a lot over the next few days. Working at Hogwarts was something he longed for. The problem was, that they only thing he longed for even harder was Neville Longbottom. 

He hated feeling like this. Like he was in a state of uncertainty. He knew that things with Neville couldn’t stay the way they were. By this point it was obvious to Harry that Neville had some sort of feelings for him, and Neville was no dummy so Harry’s feeling had to have been obvious to him. Eventually, they were going to have to actually talk this through. They were going to have to put their feelings on the line and agree to either continue being just friends, or try to avoid each other and leave themselves free to pursue other people who weren’t co-workers. 

But Harry, fearing that Neville would chose the latter over the former, never wanted to be the one to bring it up. 

Harry, following Kingsley’s instructions to the letter, hadn’t contacted any of the Aurors to inquire about the dark magic mail mystery in Hogsmeade. Professor McGonagall had even stopped Harry in the hall a few days after their meeting and asked if he’d heard anything. 

“No,” Harry answered. “Kingsley told me to step back, let the Aurors figure it out, and I’ve done that.” 

McGonagall looked taken aback. “Surely you want to figure this out?” 

“I trust Winebrand, Goursotte and Abid to do a fine job,” Harry answered. 

“I do too,” McGonagall said. “I just thought you’d be interested.” 

Harry shrugged, “No time. I’ve got stacks of essays to mark.” 

McGonagall smiled firmly and nodded her head, as though she approved of Harry’s answer. “Very well. Keep me updated if you hear from Kingsley or any of the Aurors.” 

“I will,” Harry said, “But you’re headmistress. They’d probably go right to you and not me if anything happens.”

“True,” she said, sounding surprised by how correct he was. 

______

 

The Friday after the Aurors had arrived at Hogwarts, Harry had stopped Neville in the hall between classes, “Drinks in my flat or yours tonight?” 

“Er, actually I’m going out for dinner,” Neville said. 

“You are?”

“Yeah,” Neville fidgeted, shifting his feet and avoiding eye contact with Harry. “Wesley asked me to go to dinner with him.” 

“Oh,” Harry replied, not knowing what else to say. 

“Yeah, so I’ll be out at dinner,” Neville said, stuffing his hands in his pockets and rocking back and forth on his heels.

“OK, yeah. Have a great time,” Harry said. He knew he was failing at keeping his voice light and friendly. There was a sour taste in his mouth, and it came through in his tone of voice. 

Neville ignored it and nodded perfunctorily, “I will. Thanks.” He turned on his heel and walked away.

Harry watched Neville walk away from him, trying hard to calm the voices in his head. His stomach felt it was full of a million pixies fighting amongst themselves. 

_ You don’t have any claim to him, _ Harry told himself.  _ He’s welcome to go out to dinner with anyone he wants. His past with Wesley is immaterial.  _

Maybe if he kept telling himself things like that, he’d eventually believe it. 

Harry trudged back to his classroom. How the bloody hell could he be expected to teach his sixth years anything after the blow he’d just had? It wasn’t his best class to be sure. He was lecturing on non-verbal spells, but he wasn’t doing his best. He could see the students, heads in their hands, doodling on parchment and looking bored out of their minds. 

Just over halfway through the class, he meandered on an answer a student had asked, because he’d forgotten the point he wanted to make because his mind was screaming  _ Neville and Wesley!  _ at him. He finally sighed. “Listen, class. It’s Friday, it’s the last class of the week, and I’ve got a headache that feels like the whomping willow lives in my brain. Do you mind if we cut out early and pick this up next week?” 

The students didn’t need telling twice. It took about a second for them to scrape back their chairs, gather their books and head for the door. A few waved goodbye and a couple even wished him well with his headache. 

When he was alone in his classroom at last, he pushed his fingertips into his closed eyes and sighed. Blimey, he felt awful. 

At dinner, he sat next to Hagrid and listened gamely as he talked about the pregnant unicorn in the woods. As long as Harry nodded in the right places, and kept up an occasional “Oh Yeah?” Hagrid didn’t notice anything amiss. 

That evening he sat for a while in his flat, marking papers of his fourth years. They had to write papers coming up with unusual alternatives to the cruciatus curse. (As much as he didn’t want to play favorites, Jamie’s paper was perfect. Most of his alternatives were prank-like and sounded like something straight from his Uncle George. Most impressively, is that they all would work and Jamie had a charming knack with words for explaining exactly how.) 

Harry kept getting distracted, looking around his small empty flat. It was Friday, goddammit, and usually Neville was here with him. Aggravated, Harry picked up the papers, and moved from his flat to his office to finish marking. Maybe a different location would help him think of his work and not of Neville. 

It didn’t.  

He couldn’t concentrate. He couldn’t do anything except think about Neville. He was imagining a romantic candle-lit dinner between Neville and Wesley. He made himself sick imagining Neville going to the room Wesley had in Hogsmeade and kissing him, and them going to bed together. As much as he didn’t want to, he let his imagination run wild. He imagined them in a passionate kiss, pulling each others’ shirts off. He imagined them falling into bed, working their hands into the others’ trousers, and finally pulling the trousers off. 

He imagined Winebrand on his back, legs spread, with Neville settled on top between them, thrusting and sweating. He wondered what Neville’s climax face would look like. 

Harry realized he’d been staring at the wall, nearly in a trance, imagining this for a good ten minutes. His face was hot. He shook his head, trying to clear the dirty thoughts away.

He wanted to concentrate on his students’ work, but he just couldn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to think of anything but Neville. 

Frustrated and angry with himself, he got out of his chair, pulled his invisibility cloak out of the locked drawer where he kept it, put it on, and crept into the hallway. He quietly made his way to the entrance hall and sat on a bench, keeping an eye on the front door. 

Peeves glided through at one point, quietly singing a song about pranking the kitchen elves. Harry probably should have stopped him, those poor elves, but he sat there staring at the front door. 

Finally, after more than an hour of waiting, Harry heard the lock click, and watched as Neville quietly came in, shutting the door behind him and using his wand to relock the door. 

Harry studied Neville’s face, trying to gauge what had happened that night from his expression. He couldn’t tell a thing; Neville’s face was completely impassive. Harry looked up and down at Neville’s clothes, looking for a loosened shirt, maybe wrinkled trousers, but nothing, not a single hair, looked out of place. 

Neville made his way through the entryway and down the hall toward the staircase leading to his flat. Harry followed at a distance, tiptoeing the whole way. When Neville expertly stepped over the trick step, Harry followed. 

Harry was several feet behind Neville when Neville opened the door to his flat and walked in, letting the door shut behind him with a small click that reverberated through the empty hall. He stood in front of Neville’s door for several minutes trying to decide what to do. 

Should he knock? If he knocked what was he going to do once Neville answered? He couldn’t demand Neville tell him what happened tonight. 

Should he turn and go back to his own flat, and leave Neville alone and go back to the way things have been going for them the last several weeks? After the amount of time he’d spent thinking about Neville this evening, that choice seemed impossible.  

Finally, Harry pulled off the invisibility cloak and knocked on the door. It took Neville a couple of moments to answer. He was still wearing the same trousers, but had only a white undershirt on. He was also brushing his teeth. 

“Harry,” he said, garbled through a mouthful of toothpaste. He held the door open and Harry walked into the flat. Neville held up his finger, telling Harry to wait a moment, and went to the bathroom, where Harry could hear him spit his toothpaste into the sink and rinse the toothbrush off. 

Neville came back into the main area of the flat wiping his mouth, “What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing’s wrong,” Harry said. “I just wanted to see how your date went.” 

“Date?” Neville snorted, “It was hardly a date.” 

“No?” 

“Nah.” Neville shook his head. “Just catching up. He’s engaged, you know. To a woman.” 

“I didn’t know,” Harry said, his tightly wound guts unfurling in relief. 

“What’s this about?” Neville asked, looking at Harry critically. 

Harry didn’t answer. He looked down, afraid to say anything. 

“Harry?” Neville asked, worry in his voice and taking a tentative step closer. 

_ Act like the Gryffindor you are, _ Harry told himself. 

That was all he needed. He took two large strides, closing the distance between himself and Neville, and pulled him in for a needy kiss. 

Neville stood stock still, stunned to have Harry kissing him. This shock only lasted a second, before he melted into Harry and kissed him back. 

Harry wrapped his arm around Neville’s waist and pulled him closer, while Neville, unable to believe what was even happening, lay his hand gently on Harry’s cheek. 

It was Neville who broke the kiss first. He leaned his forehead on Harry’s. “What are we doing?” he whispered. 

“This,” Harry answered, placing another soft kiss on Neville’s lips. 

Neville smiled into the kiss, but this time, pulled away. “I don’t know this is such a great idea, Harry.” 

“I know,” Harry admitted. 

Neville frowned, “I know being at Hogwarts and not having a lot of contact outside school can be frustrating, like sexually or whatever, but I make it a point to not make out with straight guys no matter how much I want to.” 

“I’m not straight.” 

“Excuse me?” Neville asked. 

“Blimey, Nev. I thought I was being transparent. I’m not straight, I’m bi.” 

Neville put his hands in his trouser pockets and looked at the ceiling. “Are you telling me, that I was sitting here feeling guilty for almost kissing you  _ twice  _ because I thought you were straight, and it wouldn’t have been a problem at all.”

“Merlin’s balls, Nev. Did you think I was leading you on? Do you think I’m that much of an asshole?” 

“No!” Neville said quickly. “I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t want to lead you into something you’d regret. In the greenhouse, you said you said you wanted it to go back to how it was before. With us just being friends.”

“That’s because you were acting like such a twat after we almost kissed in my flat that one time!”

“Well, I was embarrassed!” Neville said defensively. 

“What the fuck were you embarrassed about?” 

“You don’t get it?” Neville asked. “I thought you were straight, mate. I figured you could tell I fancied you, and...I don’t know. Like I said I’m not in the business of fancying straight blokes and I felt badly that I did. Then I was embarrassed by how much I wanted to kiss you, and when you almost kissed me back I thought it was just, I dunno. Horniness?”

“Just so we’re clear,” Harry said, “If I’d been totally straight, I never would have lead you on like that. OK? I’m not like that.” 

“Okay,” Neville said, his shoulders loosening with relief. “So why’d you just agree that this might not be such a good idea?” 

“Because I’m not sure snogging a colleague  _ is _ a good idea.”

“Oh, well. I snogged Winebrand plenty.” 

“So I’ve heard,” Harry said dryly. 

“It’s not against the rules or anything,” Neville said. “It’s pretty common knowledge that Madam Hooch and Pomfrey have been together for years.” 

“No shit?” He had no idea. 

“There have even been married couples who teach here. You can’t possibly think in the entire history of Hogwarts no two teachers have ever had sex.” 

“All right,” Harry said. “So it’s allowed then?”

“Absolutely,” Neville grinned. 

“So if you want to kiss again,” Harry said. “I’m all for it.” 

Neville didn’t need to be asked twice, he covered this distance between the two of them in one long stride and captured Harry’s lips with his own. And this time the kiss was enthusiastic. Built out of months of pent up frustration, they wasted no time in walking, lips still attached, to Neville’s bed. 

They collapsed together on the bed, Neville pulling his shirt over his head. Harry took in Neville’s chest, broad from his work in the greenhouse and covered in soft scattered chest hair. He planted a few kisses along the planes of Neville’s chest before removing his own shirt. He was scrawnier than Neville, and where Neville had a flat stomach with just a hint of ab definition, Harry’s newly sedentary job gave him a little tummy pouch. But Neville didn’t care, he looked at Harry with hungry and needy eyes before crashing their lips together once again. 

If either of them wanted to take their time and appreciate what was finally happening, they didn’t manage to do that. They didn’t hesitate to slip off their trousers and pants, and wrap their hands around each others cocks and start jerking. 

Again, it was Neville who pulled away first, “Harry, let’s slow down a bit,” he panted. Barely five minutes had passed since they kissed. 

“All right,” Harry agreed reluctantly. He removed his hand from around the thick cock and wrapped his arm around Neville’s waist and thrust his pelvis into Neville’s. 

“Uh,” Neville groaned as he grabbed Harry’s backside and pulled him in tight to grind against him, their cocks bumping each other. 

“Have you ever been with another man?” Neville whispered, still holding onto tight to Harry’s arse as he continued to grind. He thought maybe talking could get them to last a little longer. 

It took Harry a moment to get his wits about him and he let out a huff of a laugh, “Charlie took me to a gay club on Boxing Day,” he admitted. 

Neville stilled for a moment and pulled his head back slightly to look Harry in the eye. “What’d you do?”

“Just a hand job,” Harry said. 

“With Charlie?” 

“No!” Harry said. “Oh gods, no. He Ginny’s brother, which makes him kind of like my brother. That would be awful. It was with a random guy at the club, Rahul.” 

“Rahul,” Neville repeated, he resumed thrusting, leaning in to kiss Harry’s neck. “How was it?”

“Good enough I figured I’d never question being bi again,” Harry answered honestly. “But not as good as this,” he lifted Neville’s head toward him and planted him with a passionate kiss. 

It was pointless to try and make this last any longer, they were both so ready to come. Neville reached his hand between them and grabbed both their cocks together and started jerking. 

Harry took a quick breath in, shocked at how good that felt. He closed his eyes, and bit his lip, concentrating on the feel of Neville’s hand around his cock, the feeling of his own cock sliding against Neville’s in rhythm. 

“I’m gonna come,” Harry whispered.

“Do it,” Neville instructed, his hand sped up. 

Harry did. With a low moan, he came first, followed shortly by Neville, who came with a series of gasps slipping out of his mouth. Neville slowed his hand down, but took his time, rubbing their come together, slicking it over both their cocks, before he stopped altogether. 

They caught their breath, Neville resting his forehead on Harry’s. Harry looked into Neville’s eyes and let a slow smile spread across his face. “Well, that was fantastic.”

Neville chuckled as he rolled off of Harry and grabbed his wand from the bedside table. He did a quick cleaning spell over both of them, and then lay by Harry’s side and snuggled in, kissing his shoulder.  “Yeah,” he agreed. “Amazing.” 

Harry was wide awake, his body felt warm and fluid and like he could go for a run for hours. It was a giddiness he hadn’t felt in quite a long time. He turned to Neville. It seemed sex had the opposite effect on him. He looked pleased and flushed, but his eyes were drooping and he cuddled in closer to Harry and breathed him in deeply. 

Harry laughed and poked Neville in the side, “Hey, Nev. Should we talk?”

“No talk. Sleep,” Neville murmured but he laughed and sat up a little. “What do you want to talk about?” 

“Do you always get so tired after sex?” Harry raised an eyebrow at him. 

Neville smiled ruefully. “I don’t,” he admitted. “I was on patrol last night and barely slept, then I had a couple glasses of wine with dinner. I was all ready to go to bed, when  _ someone _ came knocking on my door.” He nudged Harry playfully. 

Harry leaned up and kissed his lips. “Well, I’m wired, so I’m going to let you get to sleep.” 

“You’re leaving?” Neville asked. 

“Not for good,” Harry said. “I just really feel,” he shook his hands a little, “Like I’ll never sleep again, and if I stay here I will definitely keep you awake.” 

“All right,” Neville said. “One more kiss though.”

Harry leaned down and planted a smoldering kiss on Neville’s mouth, before pushing off and getting dressed. Neville watched with tired eyes Harry pulling on his trousers and his shirt. 

“See you at breakfast tomorrow,” Harry said. 

“Tomorrow,” Neville promised. “And maybe I’ll be able to actually stay awake more tomorrow evening?” 

Harry grinned, “Oh, I’ll definitely be back tomorrow evening.” 

Harry walked out of Neville’s flat, his invisibility cloak shoved in his trouser pocket. It was probably a mistake to not wear it, because not three feet out of the door, Peeves came around the corner, took one look at Harry, and figured out what was up. 

“Ooooh, Potty Potter,” Peeves wheezed in his oily voice. “You and Longbottom? This is quite a story. I knew Longbottom was a man who loved men, but The Wizarding Savior? Hee hee!” He flipped a few times before going into a suggestive dance right in front of Harry. 

Undaunted and too happy to care, Harry just shrugged, “It’s not a big deal, Peeves. Now please move out of my way.” 

Harry didn’t know where he wanted to go. He was too jittery to go back to his flat. He could go to the kitchens and have Kreacher make him some hot chocolate. He could grab his broom and work off some of his extra energy flying around the Quidditch Pitch. But none of those things exactly sounded appealing. 

He wanted to  _ talk.  _

Harry knew at once there was someplace he wanted to go. Over winter holiday he wanted someone to talk with about his feelings for Neville so badly, and he was so stupid to have not done it when he got the chance. 

There was one person Harry had known since he was eleven. From the time they met on the train, Ron had been ever-loyal and non-judgmental. He was also, very conveniently, a night owl and Harry knew he’d still be awake. 

Harry hurried back to his flat, so he could floo-call his best friend. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in posting. I've been doing a lot of work on my original fic recently, and my fanfics have paid the price for it :( Don't worry. I have two more chapters of this fic planned, and the next actually started, so hopefully it wont be too long before I post the next!
> 
> Because of my time crunch, this chapter was only briefly proof-read. I take full ownership of all mistakes and apologize for them!

Harry entered his flat and immediately floo-called Ron at his house. “Ron?” he called out of the fireplace.

He could hear footsteps coming from the next room. Ron, wearing pajamas and slippers, knelt in front of the kitchen fireplace, saw Harry’s head there and asked, “What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing’s wrong,” Harry said. “I just can’t sleep and wanted to talk.” 

“Sure,” Ron said, “Come on through.” 

Harry pulled his head out of the fireplace, grabbed some floo powder and made his way over to Ron and Hermione’s house. He tripped, as he always did, getting out of the fireplace. Ron was used to Harry’s lack of coordination getting out of a floo (maybe if he’d been flooing since infancy like Ron, he’d be better at it) and was waiting there to offer his hand to help Harry balance. 

“Hermione here?” 

“She’s asleep,” Ron answered. “What’s up?” He knew Harry wouldn’t be coming over just for small talk. “My kids OK?” 

“Your kids are fine.” 

“Then what is it?” 

“I slept with Neville.” Harry figured there was no beating around the bush. 

Ron stared at Harry for several moments in silence, an array of emotions moving quickly across his face; confusion, realization, surprise, shock, and finally delight. He laughed out loud, “Well, that’ll make Hermione happy.” 

“What?” Harry asked. Of every reaction Ron could have had, that was basically the last Harry had expected. What did Hermione have to do with this?

Ron shrugged, “Well you know how she likes to be right.” 

“What?” Harry asked again. 

“Have a seat,” Ron gestured toward the kitchen table. Harry sat while Ron grabbed a couple of butterbeers from the ice box and handed one to Harry. Ron sat down across from Harry and said, “Hermione has maintained for a while that you were into blokes, and after New Years Eve, she said you fancied Neville.” 

Harry huffed. “Well. I must have been quite transparent because on New Years Eve, Ginny asked me if I did.” 

“Did you tell her yes?” Ron asked. 

“No,” Harry admitted, shaking his head. “I denied it and then slept with her.” 

“Oh sweet Morgana,” Ron rubbed his face with his hands. “Why’d you do that?” 

“Because I was in the mood, and telling anyone that I fancied Neville wasn’t something I was ready to do yet.” 

“Uh-huh,” Ron looked at Harry, unconvinced. “Anyway, I told Hermione that you couldn’t possibly be interested in blokes, because that is something you  _ definitely  _ would tell me because you know I wouldn’t care. But you didn’t. So….” he drifted off. 

“Blimey, Ron. I wasn’t even really telling myself until a few weeks ago. When did Hermione first tell you she suspected it?”

“Sixth year at Hogwarts,” Ron said, taking a sip of his butterbeer.

Harry spluttered, choking on his own drink. “That long ago?” 

“She was sure your Malfoy obsession was about something else besides thinking he was a Death Eater. Then you went and married Ginny, and she was like, ‘well maybe he’s not into blokes.’ But then a couple years after that Charlie came out as bi, it was like a lightbulb went off over her head, and she was like, ‘I think Harry’s bi as well.’” 

“The brightest witch of her age,” Harry muttered. 

“Too right,” Ron agreed cheerfully. There was a brief silence and he urged Harry, “Tell me about Neville.” 

Harry softened. “He’s just….I don’t know Ron. I just like him a lot, and we almost kissed twice. Once last semester and once the day we got back from winter holiday. But we were interrupted both times and it got real awkward there for a bit.” 

“So what happened?” 

“You hear about the aurors in Hogsmeade?” 

“Yeah, the dark artifacts being sent by post?” 

“One of the Aurors there is Neville’s ex-”

Ron gasped, “Who?” 

“Wesley Winebrand,” Harry answered. Then realizing what he said, “Oh, fuck. Winebrand is in the closet, publicly. Don’t tell anyone.”

“Of course.” 

“So Neville and Wesley went for dinner tonight and I just-” Harry cut himself off and thought momentarily. “I just got so fucking jealous.” 

“So what’d you do?” Ron leaned in to Harry, chin in his hand. 

“I waited until he got back, then went to his flat and kissed him.” 

“Bold,” Ron laughed. “Then you slept with him?”

“Uh-huh.” 

“And now you’re here telling me about it?” Ron asked. 

“Yes,” Harry said. 

“Alright. Well, thanks for telling me.” Ron scratched his head a little, laughing softly. He seemed amused. “I dunno what I’m supposed to do with this information.” 

“You’re alright with it?” 

“With you and Neville?”

“With everything. With my being bi, and being with a guy - with Neville.”

“Blimey, Harry. I’d never care if you were gay or straight or bi, you must know that. And Neville? He’s a decent bloke. I still say he’s stodgy, but you and Charlie insist he…” Ron drifted off. “I just realized you and Charlie slept with the same bloke.” 

“Yeah,” Harry chuckled. 

“Just tell me you never slept with Charlie. It’s enough you did with my sister.” 

“No,” Harry said. “Charlie’s like a brother to me, that’d be weird. He did take me to a gay club in muggle London on Boxing Day though.” 

“Of course he did,” Ron rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t expect anything less from Charlie. But how’d he know you were bi if I didn’t?” 

Harry spread his hands in an  _ I don’t know _ gesture. “Dunno. I think he figured it out.” Harry decided not to tell Ron that years earlier he’d evidently outed himself to Charlie in a drunken moment of honesty. 

“So is this, like, a secret?” Ron asked. 

“Well, I’m not ready for the  _ Prophet _ to know,” Harry said dryly. 

“Hermione?” 

“Oh yeah, definitely you can tell her. Just don’t tell Ginny. She should hear that from me and I want to give this thing with Neville some time first.” 

“So just the three of us know? And Neville?” 

“Yeah, just us. Well, and  Peeves because he saw me coming out of Neville’s flat looking all sexed up.” 

Ron snorted, “That means the ghosts all know by now and McGonagall will know by breakfast.” 

“Fuck,” Harry closed his eyes. “Everyone knowing means my  _ kids  _ will know.”

“Don’t worry, McGonagall will scare Peeves into not telling anyone else,” Ron assured him. It was true, McGonagall seemed to be the only person who could control Peeves. 

Harry rubbed the back of his neck, everything that had happened that night finally sinking in. “This is just...huge. And different.” 

“You scared?” Ron asked. 

“A little,” Harry admitted. “A new relationship. With a  _ bloke _ ? I dunno. What if it doesn’t work out and we have to keep  _ working  _ together? What if it  _ does _ work out, and I have to come out to my kids?” 

Ron leaned forward and lay a gentle hand on Harry’s arm. “Hey, calm down. Things like this have a way of working themselves out.” 

“Do they?” Harry asked skeptically. 

“They do,” Ron assured him. “If the future seems that awful, you can probably go back to Neville right now and tell him you want to just stay friends.” 

“No!” Harry said quickly, not even having to think about it. 

“See?” Ron said, “Your instinct already is to stay with Neville. Stay with Neville, Harry. People want you to be happy.” 

“They want the juicy gossip,” Harry corrected him. 

Ron grinned and pulled his hand back to take a swig of butterbeer. “The people who read the  _ Prophet, _ yeah. But all of us,” he waved his hands around, “Me and Hermione, and your kids and even Ginny? We all want you to be happy. And we all already like Neville.” 

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. 

“It’ll work out,” Ron promised him. 

Harry had to admit, he felt better. The jitteriness and nerves he felt immediately after sleeping with Neville was gone. He knew he could count on Ron. 

Now all he wanted was to get back to the castle, fall asleep, and find Neville in the morning.    
  


______

The next morning, Harry awoke later than normal. He looked at the clock and saw it was after eight o’clock. Considering he’d stayed up talking with Ron until well after two in the morning, it was no surprise. He jumped in the shower, hurrying so he wouldn’t miss his window for breakfast. 

As he was toweling off he heard a knock on his flat door. He grabbed his wand and cast a quick see-through charm on the door and saw Neville standing on the other side. Harry wrapped the towel around his waist, and opened the door, grinning. 

Neville stepped through the doorway, his eyes widened in surprise to see Harry standing there wearing nothing but a towel. “Hi,” he said, his eyes lustful and raking Harry’s near-naked form.

“Hey,” Harry said. 

“It’s uh-” Neville said, he shook his head, and met Harry’s eyes. “It’s late, I thought we could grab breakfast.” 

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. He turned, and walking toward his dresser, dropped the towel to the floor. He opened the drawer to grab a pair of boxer shorts, when Neville came up behind him, kissed his neck and pressed his body into Harry’s naked body. 

“I thought you wanted breakfast,” Harry teased. 

“I see something that looks a lot better than food,” Neville murmured, his lips moving across the back of Harry’s neck, and reaching down to squeeze Harry’s backside. 

Gods, Charlie hadn’t been kidding when he said that Neville was anything buy stodgy in bed. Quiet and professional in his demeanor on a day to day basis, when it came to sex, Neville wasn’t shy in the least. He knew what he wanted and Harry had no idea how much of a turn on it would be to be in bed with someone so commanding. Maybe it was a little bit of a kink he never knew he had. 

“Turn around,” Neville ordered. 

Harry did, and Neville sank to his knees as he pushed Harry lightly so his back was up against the dresser. 

Harry gasped when Neville began to kiss his way up his thighs, his fingers moving lightly over Harry’s balls, finally taking Harry’s cock into his mouth. 

It’s not that Harry had never had oral sex before, it was that he’d never had it from Neville, because Gods, did Neville know just what to do with his mouth. He had Harry squirming against the dresser and panting in no time at all. He laid the palm of his hand on top of Neville’s head and looked down. He grinned to see that Neville had used the hand not wrapped around Harry’s cock to unbutton his own trousers and jerk himself off. Harry reached back and grabbed his wand, pointed it at Neville and vanished his trousers and pants. 

Neville looked up in surprise, met Harry’s eyes, and grinned with his mouth still around Harry’s dick. With his trousers gone, Harry could watch as Neville blew him and jerked off at that same time. 

It was all so much and Harry couldn’t hold off anymore. “I’m gonna come,” he gasped. Neville didn’t pull off, in fact he let Harry’s cock even deeper into his mouth so that his mouth had taken in nearly all of Harry’s length. As Harry released, Neville expertly swallowed the come, but for a little that dribbled out the side of his mouth. 

Harry’s head fell back as he struggled to catch his breath. After a moment, he looked down. Neville’s face was flushed, his lips swollen and red and he was masturbating slowly, his eyes meeting Harry’s. 

Harry pulled him up by the elbow and kissed him deeply. Neville’s mouth tasted bitter, but not entirely unpleasant. Harry kissed Neville on his chest and down his stomach as he sunk to his knees to face Neville’s hard cock. 

“I’ve never done this before,” Harry admitted, taking Neville’s cock in his hands and giving it a few cursory jerks. 

Neville took a quick breath in and closed his eyes. “You don’t have to suck me if you don’t want.” 

“I want to,” Harry insisted. “I’ve just never done it before and I wanted to let you know that.” 

Neville opened his eyes and looked down at Harry with an incredible fondness in his eyes. “Just think about how you like it, and do that. Plus, I’m really close and I promise it will not take you long.”

“Okay,” Harry said, tearing his eyes away from Neville’s face to look at the cock in front of him. He was bigger than Harry, both in length and girth, but only by a little. Harry licked his lips, opened wide and wrapped his mouth around Neville’s cock. It felt weird, his mouth being filled like that. He experimentally ran his tongue along the underside of the glans, and was pleased when Neville moaned in pleasure. 

He decided to go for it, taking Neville’s length as far into his mouth as he could and wrapping his hand around the shaft, he started moving his head up and down, sucking lightly. 

Neville hadn’t been lying, it took barely any time at all before he was warning Harry he was going to come. Harry didn’t know what to expect, but he kept his lips sealed around Neville’s cock. He didn’t expect the semen to release quite so rapidly, and right onto his gag reflex. 

He pulled off and coughed, still jerking Neville through his orgasm. “Sorry,” he croaked. Neville’s come was on Harry’s chin and chest. 

Neville leaned against the dresser, a languid smile spreading across his face. “Don’t be sorry. It’s not easy to learn to swallow. I should have told you I didn’t expect that your first time out.”

Harry stood and kissed Neville, grabbing his wand and doing a quick cleaning charm on himself. 

They kissed a few more moments, before Neville pulled back, rested his forehead on Harry’s and said with a smile, “I think we missed breakfast.” 

Harry grabbed his pocket watch off the dresser and checked the time. Sure enough it was just 9:00 a.m., right as weekend breakfast ended. “I can get Kreacher to bring us something to eat here,” Harry offered.

“Here?” Neville asked. 

“Sure. We should probably get dressed first.” 

They put on their clothes and Harry called out, “Kreacher!” 

A couple of seconds later there was a  _ pop _ sounds as the elderly house elf appeared in front of them. “Yes, Master Harry?” 

“Please just call me Harry,” Harry said. It was something he’d had to tell Kreacher over and over. The word Master made him deeply uncomfortable, but Kreacher continued to prefer using it. The fact that he still “owned” Kreacher also made him feel ill, but he knew if he were to set Kreacher free, another family would snatch him up, and who knew how he’d be treated then? It was best for Kreacher to stay at Hogwarts so Harry could at least make sure the guy was being treated fairly and was as happy as he could be. 

“Yes….Harry,” Kreacher said, stumbling over his attempt to not call Harry ‘Master.’

“Neville and I missed breakfast in the Great Hall. Would you mind please bringing us something to eat here in my flat?” 

“Yes, Master,” Kreacher said, bowing deeply. “I mean Harry.” He disappeared with another popping sound, leaving Harry and Neville to wait for him. 

“Is that taking advantage of Kreacher?” Neville asked. 

Harry shrugged. “Maybe, but he actually seems to like it when I ask him for help. If I didn’t ask him to do things, I might never see him and then I’d worry. Before this year, I had Jamie looking out for him.” 

“Why’d you never have him come work in your house?” Neville asked. 

“Are you kidding? I could never have an unpaid servant - a slave really. It’s gross and even if I didn’t think it was gross, Hermione’d have my ass for it.” 

“True, but if you need to check on him, you’d have been able to do it in your house,” Neville pointed out. 

“I don’t think Grimmauld Place is good for Kreacher. So many shitty memories. I like him here where he has company of other elves. Forcing an elf to be the only of its kind in a house full of wizards is cruel.” 

“You’re a noble man, Harry Potter.” 

Harry shrugged, “You say that, but I still technically own him and I don’t feel good about it.” 

At that moment, Kreacher apparated back into the flat, carrying a tray filled with food. “That was fast,” Harry said appreciatively. “Thanks, Kreacher.” 

“Yeah, thanks Kreacher,” Neville said. 

“Yes Mas-” he broke off. “Of course, Professor Potter. And you too, Professor Longbottom.” Harry shrugged. Professor Potter was far preferable to Master. Kreacher lay the tray on the table. “Is there anything else I may help you with?” 

“This is great Kreacher. Thanks so much.” 

Kreacher bowed low, “I will return in one hour to clean up the dishes, Professors. Unless you will be too busy doing, er, other things.” 

Harry gave Kreacher a quizzical look, ‘Like what?” 

“Sir, Peeves came into the kitchen with stories about you and Professor Longbottom, and I don’t want to intrude on anything personal. It’s a house elf’s duty to avoid seeing such things of their masters.” 

“Oh for Gods’ sake,” Harry said, annoyed. “What did Peeves tell you?” 

House Elves couldn’t blush, but if they could Harry was sure Kreacher would be doing so right now. As it was, Kreacher fidgeted from foot to foot, and Harry decided to spare him the embarrassment of saying it out loud. “Never mind,” Harry sighed, “I can guess.” 

Neville looked between Harry and Kreacher with a confused expression. As Kreacher disapparated out of the room, Neville turned to Harry. “What?” 

“Peeves saw me leaving your flat last night.” 

“So?” 

“So I was a mess,” Harry said. “My shirt was unbuttoned, my hair was all over the place and I probably looked happier than he’s seen me ever. So…”

“He assumed we’d slept together?” 

“Yeah.” 

Neville huffed a laugh. “Well, let’s eat and then go figure out if the whole school knows about us.” He shrugged, unconcerned and sat at one of the chairs at the small table. 

Harry sat gently on the chair opposite, “What if he told my kids?” 

“Peeves is terrible,” Neville said, “But I really don’t think he’d do that.” 

“You sure?”

“McGonagall would come down on him so hard. He walks a fine line, but I really don’t think he’d cross it.” Neville’s voice was reassuring, but Harry still felt a little unsure. 

“Eat,” Neville urged Harry, “We’ll talk to McGonagall after breakfast if it makes you feel better.” 

Harry glanced down at the table and was suddenly ravenous. Kreacher had brought them each a bowl of porridge, a large plate of bacon, and a platter of sliced fresh fruit, as well as a magically warmed teakettle with two teacups. “Sure,” he said, as he loaded his plate with bacon and fruit and began to eat. “I went to see Ron last night.” 

“Oh yeah?” Neville asked, unfolding a napkin and setting it in his lap. “Did you have anything interesting to tell him?” 

Harry snorted, “I told him about us. Hope that’s OK.” 

“Of course,” Neville answered. “Tell me about how he was.” 

Harry was off and talking about his visit with Ron the prior night. As he talked, he was able to relax remembering how good the unwavering support of his best friend had felt. Maybe this would turn out all right. They’d talk to McGonagall, and when the time was right, let other people in on their new relationship. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, time sure got away from me.   
> This chapter is short because I felt guilty about how long it was taking me to post new chapters. Next chapter will almost definitely be the last.   
> Thanks for reading and commenting!

It turned out that letting McGonagall in on their relationship was something that had to be done immediately. Before they’d even finished breakfast, there was a knock on Harry’s flat door. He opened it to find a house elf standing there with a note. “Note from the Headmistress for Master Potter,” the elf said proudly. 

Harry took the note with a thanks, closed the door and ripped open the scroll. In McGonagall’s neat handwriting, was a very short request. 

> _ Potter, _
> 
> _ Please come see me at your earliest convenience. Bring Longbottom.  _
> 
> _ Minerva McGonagall _

 

“Gods,” Harry muttered, showing Neville the parchment. 

Neville shrugged, “Better finish eating in that case.” He picked up another piece of bacon and began chewing. He seemed wholly unconcerned. 

Harry, on the other hand, had lost his appetite. “I’m not hungry anymore,” he said. “I’m just going to go brush my teeth.”

Once Harry was done that, and Neville had finished eating, they made their way to the Headmistress’s quarters together. The gargoyles took their appointment information and allowed them entry, up the spiraling stone staircase and into the office. There they saw McGonagall sitting at her desk, doing paperwork, and Peeves sitting, quiet but agitated, on a nearby chair looking annoyed.

“Come in Potter, Longbottom,” McGonagall said, waving her wand to conjure two more chairs for them to sit on. She carefully gathered the work she was doing, waved her wand toward it, and it gathered itself into a neat stack and floated to a nearby table, leaving her desk clean. 

They sat, and Harry said, “What can we do for you?” 

McGonagall looked at Harry overtop of her glasses, “Peeves here came into the great hall during breakfast loudly talking about something he found very interesting.”

Harry looked at Peeves, waiting for him to say something. He was silent, but McGonagall answered instead. “I’ve put a silencing curse on him for the time being. He can’t say anything until I lift it.”

Harry snickered, “Can it be permanent?” 

Peeves glared.

McGonagall chuckled, “It might be nice for the rest of us, but that is a bit cruel to do, even to Peeves.” 

“Well, lift the curse so we can hear what Peeves was saying.” Harry sighed. He didn’t want to have to be the one to utter the words  _ Neville and I are sleeping together  _ to McGonagall.

McGonagall waved her wand toward Peeves, who immediately looked smug. “Don’t think I don’t know what you and Longbottom were up to last night, Wee Potty Potter.” 

“What’s that?” Neville asked mildly. 

Peeves laughed in delight. “I saw Potter coming out of your quarters last last night, Longbottom. He looked thoroughly sexed up.” 

“Hmm,” Neville said thoughtfully. “So?” Harry was glad Neville, the mild-mannered of the two of them, had taken control of talking to Peeves. Harry was ready to fight him, but Neville could quietly as his questions. 

“Soooooo,” Peeves drawled out. “It’s a bit of juicy gossip that the Boy Who Lived is having a love affair with another man.” 

“Is it though?” Neville asked? “And how can you be sure what you saw?” 

Peeves scoffed, “I’ve been roaming these halls since before the plumbing was installed. You can’t possibly think I don’t know what goes on behind closed doors after a thousand years.” 

Neville nodded, “OK. So what if it’s true? What’s juicy about that?” 

“You know,” Peeves wheedled in his oily voice. 

“No,” Neville said, playing dumb. “If you’ve been here for a thousand years, you must know that people have sex and it’s not a big deal.”

Peeves scoffed, “Not a big deal? This one is a very big deal because it involves the Great Potter and someone who is not his wife. It’s gay now and that just adds this extra layer of deliciousness to the whole thing. How could I keep quiet about that?”

Harry interrupted aggressively, “What’d you do, Peeves?”

“I just told people what they might like to hear,” Peeves answered, in mock innocence. 

“What people?” Harry asked. 

“Just the staff,” McGonagall answered before Peeves could say anything. “I put the silencing charm on him as soon as I heard him working his way around the staff table saying, uh…” she drifted off. 

“Saying that Potter and Longbottom were shagging each other late last night.” Peeves sounded so smug, Harry wanted to curse him back to the stone age. 

“That’s nobody’s business,” Professor McGonagall said. 

Peeves shrugged, “I don’t care about what is who’s business,” he said unconcernedly. “You all are just people who’ll be gone from here in a few decades and old Peevesy will have new people to contend with.”

“Unless I banish you,” McGonagall said. 

That got Peeves’ attention. He sat up straighter. “You wouldn’t!”

“Maybe to you it seems like we’re insignificant because we come and go and you’ve been in the castle for over a thousand years. But this is a castle that belongs to witches and wizards and as Headmistress I have the right to banish you forever.” 

Peeves looked up at Dumbledore, as though expecting help from the portrait of the old Headmaster, who’d always found Peeves’ shenanigans more entertaining than anything. But Dumbledore was no help. He was frowning in disapproval at Peeves. 

“You’ve gone too far this time, Peeves,” McGonagall said. “If I hear you utter one word about this to anyone else, you will be banished from the castle forever. Consider this your only warning.” 

Peeves looked sulky, but nodded his head. 

“Now,” McGonagall said in her sternest voice. “You tell Professors Potter and Longbottom exactly which of their co-workers you’ve told about their relationship.” 

“C’mon Professor….” Peeves wheedled. 

“That’s Headmistress to you,” McGonagall said. “You tell them. They have every right to know what personal information you’ve given and to whom.” 

In that moment, McGonagall sounded so angry, that Harry couldn’t help feeling the tiniest blip of sympathy for old Peeves. 

Peeves slumped. “Hagrid, Slughorn, Flitwick and Hooch were the ones who definitely overheard me.” Harry had never heard Peeves sound so dejected and mumbled before. 

“Overheard you?” McGonagall raised her eyebrow at him. “Or you told outright?” 

Peeves looked even more annoyed, but admitted. “I outright told them.” 

“Very good. You’re dismissed Peeves.” Peeves headed toward the door and she reminded him, “Remember, it’s your last warning.” 

Peeves floated through the door without looking back, and McGonagall turned her attention back to Harry and Neville. Harry couldn’t help feeling like a teenager caught out of bed after curfew. That slight fear of McGonagall had never gone away. She sighed, “You couldn’t have tried harder to keep this from him?” 

Harry went red, but Neville’s had a cheshire cat grin on his face. “We weren’t exactly thinking about Peeves last night, were we?” he asked cheerfully. 

McGonagall actually laughed. “I’d be worried if you were.” She rubbed her temples with her finger tips. “Get out of here, both of you, and go talk to your colleagues about secrecy if you want to keep your relationship under wraps.” 

They stood up, and Harry asked, “Is that everything?” 

“What else would there be, Potter?” 

“He’s afraid we’re breaking school rules,” Neville explained to the Headmistress.

“Oh, Potter,” she shook her head fondly. “It’s not a big deal, you two aren’t the first.  With you being famous and being known as straight, and having children in the school, I can see how you’d like a bit of privacy on the matter. I just want to see you get it.” 

“OK, well. Thanks for the silencing charm,” Harry said. “I’d rather my kids not hear it from Peeves.” 

“Understood.” She nodded firmly, then shooed them out of her office with her hands. 

Harry and Neville stood together on the spiral staircase, silent for a few moments. When they got to the main hall, Harry spoke up. “So I’ll go talk to Hagrid and Slughorn, and you talk to Flitwick and Hooch?” he asked. 

“Sure,” Neville said agreeably. “And we swear them to secrecy.” 

“Yeah.” Harry said. 

They walked along. It was an unseasonably lovely day, the students were mostly outside, so Harry and Neville were alone in the hall, their footsteps echoing loudly. “Hey listen,” Harry said. “I don’t want you to think the secrecy is because I’m ashamed of you.” 

Neville stopped. “Blimey, Harry. I’ve never thought that.” 

“Good. Because this doesn’t have to stay a secret forever. But for now it’s so new and the secrecy is kinda…” he drifted off and looked around to make sure they were truly along before whispering, “sexy.”

Neville smirked and laughed a little. 

“But also, because Ginny and my kids should absolutely know before anything goes public. Because all four of them get a say in whether we make it public.” 

“Absolutely,” Neville agreed. 

“But I’m not quite ready for that yet,” Harry said. 

“Absolutely,” Neville repeated. “I’ll only be ready when you are.” 


	11. Chapter 11

The next several weeks were the most blissful Harry could ever remember having. He and Neville had talked to the colleagues Peeves had gotten to, and they knew to keep it a secret. 

They acted professionally toward one another during the day. But during the evening? That was another story. Every evening they didn’t have chess club, or a study group, or evening greenhouse work was spent in one of their beds shagging each other senseless. Neville had a high libido, and while Harry had always thought his own libido was low to normal, he found himself craving more and more time with Neville in bed. 

It was hard to believe that he’d ever hidden his love of men from himself, especially when he was on his back in bed with his knees drawn up and Neville carefully pushing into him. He couldn’t get enough of it, couldn’t get enough of touching and kissing and licking Neville all over. In a few short weeks, there was hardly any part of Neville’s body Harry hadn’t peppered with kisses. 

And it wasn’t just the sex either. When they weren’t having sex, they were spending as much time as possible together, still eating meals, finding reasons to head into Hogsmeade, and doing their nightwatch patrols together. They’d lay in bed after a passionate round of sex and grade papers together. Harry was surprised Neville wore reading glasses when he marked classwork, and would stare at him, surprised how gorgeous he looked in glasses. 

The other staff members who knew about them were great about keeping their secret. Hagrid kept giving Harry and Neville fond looks when he’d see them together at meal times. Madame Hooch had the two of them over for tea with her and Madame Pomfrey in a show of same-sex relationship solidarity between them. 

Their whole relationship felt like an amazing, wonderful secret between them. 

But how long could it stay a secret?

Neville traveled every summer for at least four weeks on a search for magical plants from other lands. It’s what he was doing when he had hooked up with Charlie Weasley the previous year. This summer, Neville wanted Harry to come with him. 

If Harry agreed, that meant definitely telling Ginny about them, as she would be solely responsible for the kids for those weeks. And it meant telling the kids, because at some point there might be wizarding paparazzi who’d get a picture of the two of them together and out them publicly, and that’s not how Harry needed his kids to find out about his relationship. 

The summer holidays were drawing nearer, and Harry came to the conclusion that he had to start by telling Ginny.

“Do you want me to go with you?” Neville asked. It was a late Saturday afternoon. Harry had followed Neville to the greenhouse, where he was preparing a pallet of puffapods for his third years to study on Monday. Harry had told him about his decision to tell Ginny, and was fretting about it. 

“No,” Harry said. “It’s something I should probably do myself.” 

He had contacted Ginny, and she agreed Harry could come to Grimmauld Place for dinner to have a talk. She had no idea what it was about. 

Harry floo’ed to Grimmauld Place one Saturday evening, approximately six weeks before the end of the school year. He was busy creating his OWL exams for his fifth years, and barely had a moment to spare, but he knew he had to make time for this. 

Ginny was standing at the counter, slicing a loaf of bread while a pot of stew was magically stirring itself on the stove.  “Smells good,” Harry said, stepping out of the fireplace and into the kitchen. He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.

“How are you?” Ginny asked. “I’m pretty curious why you wanted to have dinner.” 

“We need to talk about the kids and summer.” 

“That’s it?” Ginny asked. “We could have done that by owl.”

“Well….” Harry said, drifting off.

Ginny raised an eyebrow. “Oh, so there’s something else?”

“Yeah,” Harry admitted. 

“Well, let’s sit and eat, and we can talk it over.” Ginny pulled down two bowls from the cabinet and the ladle magically filled them. She handed one bowl to Harry, and he sat down at the table. Ginny brought the bread over and sat across from Harry. “What’s up?” she asked. 

“I might be going away for a few weeks this summer,” Harry said, taking a bite of the stew. Ginny had made him beef and potato stew the way he liked it, with spinach and tomatoes added to it.

“You might be, or you are?” Ginny asked. “We can work custody around it, if that’s what you’re worried about. Mum and dad can take the kids when I’m traveling at a quidditch game and you’re gone.” 

“It’s not just that I might be traveling,” Harry admitted. 

“What is it?” 

Harry took another big bite of stew before saying, “I’ll be traveling with someone.” He paused, “Someone I’ve been seeing.”  

“You met someone?” Ginny asked, sounding surprised. “When I asked you if there was someone you fancied, you joked that you were at Hogwarts, and were you supposed to go date McGonagall. Blimey, Harry it’s not Minerva McGonagall, is it?” 

Harry laughed weakly, “It’s not McGonagall.”

“Then who is it?” 

“It’s...er...It’s Neville.”

Ginny paused, her spoon of stew halfway to her mouth. She couldn’t have looked more shocked if she tried. She put the spoon back in her bowl without taking a bite, and folded her hands in front of her, leaning forward on the table. “Before we fucked on New Years, I asked if you fancied Neville, and you answered no.”

“I lied,” Harry admitted. 

“You didn’t cheat on him with me?”

“No! Oh, Gods, no. We didn’t get together until the end of January.” 

“But you liked him then.”

“So much,” Harry said, nodding. 

“Huh,” Ginny said. She picked up her spoon and fiddled with it. “And he wants you to come away with him this summer?”

“For a few weeks. That’s why I wanted to talk to you about who’ll have the kids and when.”

“When would you be going?” Ginny asked. “I’m sure we can work it out.” 

“You don’t want to talk about this?”

“What’s there to talk about?” Ginny asked loudly.”My ex-husband is dating a man! It’s great! Everyone’s going to talk about how I turned him gay!” 

“I’m not gay,” Harry explained, “I’m bisexual.”

“That’s a distinction I’m sure the  _ Daily Prophet _ will be sure to make,” Ginny said sardonically. Ginny may have worked for the  _ Prophet _ , but she was quick to point out the Sports stories were the most honest reporting the paper has. 

“Ginny, come on. This isn’t about you.” 

Ginny snorted. “While you’re off trampling through the wilds of Europe and Asia or wherever the fuck you’re going, I’m going to be the one at home, taking the kids to Diagon Alley while the reporters from the  _ Prophet _ corner them to ask about their dad’s new boyfriend.” 

“I’m not announcing it to the  _ Prophet _ ,” Harry said, annoyed. “I was telling you because we need to work out our custody this summer. I’m telling you because the next step is to tell the kids and I need you and I to be on the same page. I can’t believe you have a problem with this. We’re divorced. I can see whoever I want to see, whether it’s a man or a woman.” 

Ginny bit the inside of her cheek. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to try to make it about me.” She picked up her spoon and started eating again. 

“I know,” Harry said. “And believe me, I’m going to try to keep this out of the  _ Prophet _ as long as I can. We’ll be abroad, away from British wizarding paparazzi. I think we can keep it quiet for a quite a long time, as long as we’re careful who we tell.” 

“I know you’ll want to keep it out of the  _ Prophet, _ ” Ginny said. “But you’d better have a plan for when they find out.” 

“Honesty?” Harry asked hopefully. 

Ginny snorted, “ _ The Prophet  _ doesn’t sell papers by offering honesty.”

“If you’re worried,” Harry said, trying to sound as reassuring as possible, “I’ll defend you if someone says you turned me gay.” 

“How noble of you.” Ginny laughed a little, “Being on the arm of the famous Harry Potter comes with some downside. Does Neville know that?”

“I don’t know,” Harry admitted. 

“You know I don’t have a problem with you being bi, with you seeing a man.”

“I know. I’d never expect you to.” 

“Does he make you happy?” 

“Yeah,” Harry said, smiling. “He really does.” 

“Ugh,” Ginny said, but she was smiling back at him. “OK, then let’s figure this out.”

They figured out when Ginny would have to cover quidditch matches while Harry was away on vacation with Neville, and sent an owl to Molly and Arthur asking if the kids could stay at The Burrow for those nights in the summer. 

“Now,” Ginny said, sitting back and adding a touch of brandy to her tea, “What and when are you going to tell the kids?”

“I was thinking after exams, but before they come home. If it’s something they’re going to worry about, I don’t want to distract them from their studies.”

“Spoken like a true Hogwarts professor,” Ginny said fondly. “Let me know if you want me there.”

“No,” Harry said. “I think it’s something I should do myself.”

“Well, you know I’m here as backup. I’ll let them know I’m supportive of you, and that they will always come first.”

“Yeah, of course. I really appreciate it, Gin.”

Ginny smiled wanly. “I like Neville. And I am happy for you.”

“Have you been thinking about dating?”

Ginny shrugged. “Not really. I’ve kind of started enjoying my alone time. I’ve never lived by myself and it’s freeing, you know? Being alone versus being lonely; I’m learning the difference between the two.” 

Harry didn’t know. He’d only lived alone at Grimmauld Place when he was nineteen for maybe a year before Ginny moved in with him. He’d hated it. He was a person who was meant to have companionship. Being alone always reminded him of those days of being ignored at Privet Drive, and along with that came a sense of loneliness. 

“Well, maybe you will meet someone,” Harry suggested. 

“It’s fine. After you and I slept together over winter holiday I decided I had enough of my temporary abstinence and have been going out, just trying to have a shag.”

Harry was surprised, “Have you been successful?” 

Ginny shrugged, but her smug look as she took a sip of tea gave away the answer. 

“That’s great, Gin. I’m really happy for you.” He wanted details, but also wanted to let Ginny preserve her privacy if that’s what she wanted. 

They talked for a little longer while they finished eating and through Harry washing the dishes. “I really have a lot of work to do,” he said, heading for the fireplace. 

“Sure,” Ginny said. “Thanks for cluing me in to your new relationship before telling the kids.”

“Oh, of course. I’d never let you find out through Lily,” Harry said, chuckling and shaking his head. He gave Ginny a kiss on the cheek and floo’ed back to Hogwarts. 

____

Over the next several weeks, every moment Harry spent not working was spent fretting over how to tell his children about him and Neville. He couldn’t forget that small hopeful look that Lily had given him after the kids had confronted him over the Prophet picture of him and Ginny kissing on New Years. He couldn’t help but think that if any of his kids harbored any sort of hope that their parents were getting back together, this should dampen that cauldron fire. 

Neville tried to calm him, but not being a parent, he didn’t quite understand the stakes, and Harry struggled to explain it to him. Because as much as he was falling in love with Neville, his kids  _ were  _ more important. His kids were the most important thing in the world to him, and while he couldn’t imagine them acting so poorly it would affect his relationship with Neville, there was a small part of his brain that was thinking... _ what if.  _

He knew his kids had every right to know that their dad had a boyfriend, but the closer the day came to tell them, the less he wanted to do it. 

Finally, though, the day came. Exams were taken, fifth years struggled through their OWLs (almost all of Harry’s fifth years could make a corporeal patronus), and there were a couple days to relax before the Hogwarts Express came. 

Harry sent a note to his kids asking them to meet him for tea in his flat the day after exams ended. 

Jamie and Lily got there first, having walked together from Gryffindor Tower. Al came by a couple of minutes later, just as Harry was pouring tea into the teacups. “Have some biscuits,” he said to Al, nodding his head to where Jamie and Lily had already eaten half the stash. 

“What’s this about, dad?” Jamie asked. 

“Why does it have to be about anything?” Harry asked, passing the teacups around and putting out a small pitcher of milk next to a plate with some sugar lumps. He shouldn’t have said that, because it definitely was about something. 

Jamie shrugged, “It just seems like all three of us here? You want to tell us something.” 

“Yeah,” Al said, sounding suspicious.

His kids were too smart for their own good. “I wanted to talk to you kids about the summer holiday.” 

“What about i?” Lily asked. “Is Mum staying with us, or are you?” 

“Both of us,” Harry answered. “But to start the holidays, you’re going to have four straight weeks with mum.” 

Al looked confused, “Why?” They were used to their parents switching custody a week at a time. 

“Well, I’m taking a four week holiday.”

“Oooh,” Lily said. “Where are you going? Can we come?”

“I’m going with someone already.” 

“What?” Lily looked confused. 

Jamie rolled his eyes, “Don’t be stupid, Lily. He’s telling us he has a girlfriend.” 

“Don’t call your sister stupid, Jamie,” Harry admonished. 

“Yeah,” Lily said, sticking her tongue out at Jamie. 

“But I am seeing someone,” Harry said carefully. He took a sip of tea and watched them carefully. 

“I knew it!” Jamie said triumphantly. He didn’t seem upset at all, in fact he seemed happy that he’d been the first one to figure it out. 

“You are?” Lily looked crestfallen. Harry’s heart ached to see her let go of that last bit of hope for him and Ginny to reunite. 

“Who is it?” Albus said. Albus, as always, was hard to read. It was as though he worked to always keep his face a cool neutral. 

“Before I tell you that, I want you to know that this is something I’m trying to keep from the  _ Prophet _ for now. So when I tell you who I’ve been seeing I need you to keep it to yourselves.”

“What about mum?” Albus asked carefully. 

“She already knows.” 

“Was she angry?” Lily asked. 

“What? No. Why would mum be angry I’m seeing someone?” 

Lily shrugged, “Because you were married to  _ her. _ ” 

“Right, we  _ were _ married. We aren’t anymore. Mum said she was happy for me, and that she hopes you kids can be too.” 

“So who is it?” Jamie asked impatiently. 

Harry took a deep breath and set his trembling teacup down.  “It’s Neville…. Professor Longbottom.” 

“Huh,” Jamie said. 

“Oh,” Albus said quietly. 

Lily looked confused. “But he’s not a woman.” 

“Don’t be stupid,” Jamie said again. “Dad’s telling us he’s gay. That’s probably why him and mum got divorced, right?”

“Jamie, please. Do  _ not  _ call your sister stupid,” Harry said, annoyed. “That is really uncalled for.”

Jamie shrugged, “Well I’m not wrong.”

“Actually, you are wrong,” Harry said. “And apologize to your sister.”

“Sorry, Lil,” he muttered, then turned back to his dad. “How am I not wrong? The person you’re seeing is a man, and that means you’re gay. We don’t care though, Dad. Gay’s not a bad thing to be.” 

“There’s this spectrum,” Harry said hold his hands out, palms facing each other. “One one end, you’ve got people who are straight, who only want to date people of the opposite sex,” he shook his left hand. “Then on the other end,” he shook his right hand, “Are people who are gay, and only want to date people of the same sex. But all this space in between is people who will date either. And I fall in this space in between.” Harry was pretty satisfied with that explanation. 

“Dad, that’s called bi,” Jamie said, rolling his eyes.

“I know it is,” Harry said. Blimey, he’d be grateful when Jamie outgrew his teenage snarky know-it-all phase. “I’m just trying to paint a picture.” 

“So, are you going to marry Professor Longbottom?” Lily asked in a small voice. 

“Oh, Lily. We aren’t there yet. It takes a long time of dating someone before you’re ready to be married. Your mum and I were together four years before we got married.”

“And even then, they only got married ‘cause mum was pregnant with me,” Jamie said. 

“Oh for Merlin’s sake, Jamie,” Harry snapped. 

Jamie shrugged, smirking. “Can’t say it’s not true.” He took a biscuit and bit into it. 

Harry sighed. It was true, technically. “I would have married her anyway,” Harry said. “We’d talked about it and planned on it during one of her off-seasons. But that’s neither here nor there. I’m not marrying Neville, Lily. Not yet, and not for a long time if it comes to that.” 

“I didn’t know you would even want to date a man,” Lily said, looking confused. “Did mum know that when she married you?” 

“Lily, this is getting a little personal now,” Harry said, keeping his voice kind. “Mum knows I’m interested in blokes, and she knows that I’m seeing Neville. And like I said before, she’s fine with it. She’s happy for me, and she doesn’t want you kids to be concerned.” 

“So when  _ are  _ you going to see us over the holidays then?” Lily asked. 

So this is what she was getting at. She was concerned about how much time she’d get with him over the holidays. 

“I’ll be traveling around Europe with Neville the first four weeks of the holiday,” Harry answered. “I’m going to help him get some foreign plants for the greenhouses. When I get back, I’ll have you for the next full five weeks. And we’ll do something special, all right? Go to the coast or something. After those five weeks, I need to be back at Hogwarts for a week, so you’ll be with your mum again, and then I’ll see you here on September first.” 

Lily counted on her fingers, “So it’s five weeks with each of you still?”

“Yes,” Harry answered. “I would not have agreed to go if it cut into my time with you. I want you all to know that.” He looked around at them, meeting each of their eyes. “You guys are still the most important part of my life.” 

“Dad, it’s fine,” Jamie said. He could have been trying to sound reassuring, but instead he sounded put-out, as though this whole conversation at been trivial, and an annoyance. 

“Yeah,” Liily said, sounding more upbeat. “I like Professor Longbottom!” she added happily. “I was scared of mandrakes, but he was real nice about it.” 

“When you see him outside of school, like when he’s with me, you can call him Neville if you’d like.” This was something they’d talked about. Harry thought it would be weird for his kids to call his boyfriend ‘Professor Longbottom.’ 

“He’s probably not going to favor us,” Jamie said, looking disappointed. “Just like you, dad. You didn’t give us any favoritism in class.” He frowned at Harry like it was terribly unfair. 

Harry chuckled, “No I expect he’ll remain just as fair has he always has.” 

“Dad listen,” Jamie said. “It’s not that I don’t want to sit here and talk about you and Professor Longbottom, but there is an end of year party in the Gryffindor Common room that Lily and I are missing out on, so…” he drifted off. 

“Fine,” Harry said. “But before you leave, I want to tell you not to tell anyone about me and Neville, all right? Not even your best friends. Not yet anyway. We’re trying to keep this private as long as possible.” Harry knew he could trust his kids. After all, they were the ones who were raised with two famous parents, and they hated winding up in the paper’s society page as much as Harry and Ginny did. 

“Sure,” Jamie said, and Lily nodded along. 

“Go,” Harry said, waving them out. 

Jamie and Lily got up and gave Harry a hug and kiss before running out the door. 

Harry turned to Al. Al hadn’t said a thing this whole time, except for ‘Oh,’ when Harry’d first said he was seeing Neville. “You’ve been awfully quiet Albus. Want to let me know what you’re thinking?” 

“I’m just surprised is all, dad.” 

“That’s fair,” Harry said. He moved over to the seat Jamie had just abandoned, right next to Al. “It’s OK to be surprised. You can be honest with me about how you’re feeling.” 

“Do you think it’s hereditary?” 

Harry was confused, “Is what hereditary?” 

“Being gay or bi?” 

“Er,” Harry said, surprised. “No, I don’t think it is. Why?” 

Al frowned and looked at his feet, and said quickly and quietly, “ _ IthinkI’mgay _ .” 

“What?” Harry asked. “I didn’t catch that.”

Al looked up at him, his eyes wide and wet and he met Harry’s eyes. “I think I’m gay.” 

Harry didn’t know why this took him by such a surprise, but it absolutely did. Maybe because Al wasn’t going to be fourteen for another few weeks, and he seemed slightly less mature than Jamie had been at that age. He didn’t think of Al as being interested in  _ anyone  _ yet. “OK. Al, that’s fine. Do you think you are or do you know you are?” 

“I’m definitely more interested in blokes,” Al said firmly. “I guess I could be bi like you, and just not know it yet though?” 

Harry nodded, “That’s a possibility I suppose. But you just might also be on the very end of this spectrum.” Harry held his hands out again, like he had when he was explaining the spectrum of sexuality to Lily earlier. 

“I think I am,” he said. He sounded thoroughly miserable about it. 

“You don’t need to be upset,” Harry said, trying to sound as soothing as possible. “It’s fine. Your mum won’t care, and you heard Jamie - he said there’s nothing wrong with being gay. He won’t make fun of you or anything.” 

Al huffed, “That’ll be a first.”

“True,” Harry said, smiling. “I just want you to know there’s no reason to be upset.” 

“It’s just that I don’t think the bloke I like, likes blokes,” Al explained. 

All at once, Harry knew, he absolutely  _ knew  _ without a doubt that Al fancied Scorpius Malfoy. He could see it in the way Al looked at Scorpius. It reminded him of how he looked at Ginny in his sixth year. Thing was, Harry could see that Scorpius might reciprocate Al’s feelings. 

Blimey, that had to be hard. Harry tried to imagine being almost fourteen years old and how he would have felt if he’d fancied Ron at that age. It was hard enough when he was older, fancying Ron’s sister. But to be so young, and liking your best friend as more than a friend had to be really trying. 

Still, Al hadn’t confided that it was Scorpius, so Harry played stupid. “That must be really difficult Albus,” he said sympathetically. 

“Yeah,” Al said, miserably looking down at his feet, which he shuffled around. “Do you think I should tell him?”

“Well, I don’t think you need to tell him you fancy him. Not yet anyway. But if you feel comfortable and you think he’ll handle it well, maybe you could come out to him? Just tell him you’re gay?”

“I don’t even know how he feels about gay wizards,” Al frowned. 

Harry couldn’t help him there. He hadn’t spent much time talking to Draco and Astoria, outside of making plans to get Al and Scorp together over summer holidays, so he didn’t have a feel for how they were raising their son. Certainly Scorpius didn’t have the same muggle-born prejudices his father’d had back in the day. There were a lot more muggle-borns in the school now than there had been back then, and Scorpius got along with all of them. 

But a lot of these old wizarding families did have some prejudices against the gay community. Not in a horrible way like in the Muggle world, but just with the idea that gay wizards wouldn’t be producing full-blood witch and wizard babies and they weren’t doing their part to pass on blood status. 

“Al, I can’t tell you what to do,” Harry said. “But you don’t need to do anything yet if you don’t want to. You can take the summer to think about it, maybe talk it over with your mum-”

Al cut him off, “Don’t tell mum!”

“I would never,” he assured Al. “That’s something that you should do, but again, only when you feel comfortable, okay? You should only tell people when you feel comfortable doing so.”

“Okay,” Al nodded. “If you hadn’t started seeing Professor Longbottom, would you have even told us that you’re bi?” 

Harry had just told Lily he was getting too personal by asking a question that was similar to this. But he and Al were having a moment, and being in the LGBT community was something they shared, and it made him want to open up to Al more. “Maybe not?” he said. “You never can tell, but it was something I hid pretty well from myself for a long time even.”

Al nodded, like it made total sense. He seemed like a wise old man, and Harry was hit with a rush of absolute love for his kid. This child who he worried about more than his other two. This child who personified the phrase ‘still waters run deep.’ He could be difficult to read, and he was quiet and hard to relate to sometimes, but being his dad was an absolute gift. “Are you going to tell Professor Longbottom what I told you?” 

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Harry said. “Unless you say it’s okay.” 

“You can tell him. But don’t tell mum or Jamie or anyone else.” 

“I promise,” Harry said. “Do you want to come around tomorrow and see Neville? Before you leave for the Hogwarts Express? If you get your stuff packed tonight, you can come by after breakfast.” He didn’t know if seeing Neville outside the classroom setting, seeing him in the role of dad’s boyfriend, would help Al. 

“I don’t know,” Al bit his lip. “Will he be coming by Grimmauld Place sometime after you get back from your holiday?”

“I think so, yes.” 

“M’kay,” Al nodded. “I’ll just see him then.” 

“Sure,” Harry said. 

“Can I go back to my common room?” he asked. “Scorp and I were playing chess.” 

“Go ahead,” Harry said, standing up. 

Al stood up wrapped his arms around his father, giving him a bear hug. Harry planted a kiss on the top of Al’s head and hugged him back. “I love you, Al.”

“Love you too, dad,” Al said. 

________

Harry cleaned up the tea and biscuit crumbs his kids had left behind. He didn’t know he could feel so calm on one hand, and so jittery on the other. He had to talk to Neville. 

He left the tea cups and saucers for the house elves to get (something he  _ never  _ did) and made his way to Neville’s flat. 

Neville answered it right after he knocked, and Harry let himself in. “How was it?” Neville asked. 

Harry made his way to the bedroom, flopped on the bed and put his arm over his eyes and sighed deeply.  

“Is that bad?” Neville asked. 

“No,” Harry said, sitting up and leaning on his elbows. “It was just a lot more….intense than I thought it would be.” 

“Intense how?” Neville sat next to Harry. 

“Albus came out to me.” 

“What?” Neville asked, shocked.

“Yeah,” Harry nodded. “I told the kids about us, had to explain the difference between gay and bi to Lily, and they were OK. They were fine, happy Ginny and I are still getting half the summer with them. I promised them a vacation, just the four of us, and I have no idea where to take them. But it was good. Jamie and Lily left--oh yeah, there’s a party going on in Gryffindor Tower right now--and Albus hung back. He told me he’s gay.” 

“That’s a shock.”

“No kidding,” Harry said. “He swore me to secrecy, which is fine. But he said I could tell you.” 

“Awww,” Neville said, but he had a pleased look on his face. 

“My kids like you.” 

“I like your kids,” Neville said. 

“Lily wanted to know if we’re getting married.” 

Neville guffawed. “Merlin, what’d you say to that?”

“That a long time goes by when people starting seeing each other until they decide to get married. Then Jamie helpfully told her that Ginny and I only got married because she was pregnant with him.”

Neville laughed, “That sounds like Jamie.” 

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. 

Neville leaned down so he was lying next to Harry, “I’m relieved, you know.” 

“Were you worried?” Harry asked. 

“Well, yeah,” Neville said, like it was obvious. “I know your kids like me as a professor. I just didn’t know how they’d feel about me being dad’s boyfriend. It’s been pretty stressful.”

“You didn’t tell me.” 

“Yeah, well, I assumed it was more stressful for you.” Neville shrugged. 

Harry leaned over and kissed Neville on the lips. “You can still tell me things like that,” he said. “Now I feel like I dominated all the conversations we had worrying about how my kids would take the news.” 

“All right,” Neville said. 

“I’m being serious, you know,” Harry said. “Relationships work when people communicate and I want this to work out, Neville. I really do, and I  _ want  _ to know when you’re having feelings like that.” 

“I get it,” Neville assured him. “I’ll do better in the future.”

Harry grinned as he leaned in for another kiss. 

_ The future.  _

He couldn’t help but look forward to a future that included Neville Longbottom. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it for this fic! Thanks for reading and commenting. I have a little nugget of an idea for a fic set a few years into the future of the end of this, but whether anything will come of it is a mystery. 
> 
> If you want to know what happens immediately after this fic, they go on vacation. They see Charlie in Romania who jokingly(ish) asks for a threesome, but of course they don't do it because Harry and Charlie are ex-brothers-in-law and that'd be weird.


End file.
